Local teachers get the opportunity to earn money in the business world over the summer, in order to bolster their technical skills, as well as understand the world they are preparing their students for.

While this idea seems like the perfect solution to the expensive housing market and rough-and-tumble economy of today, the program began nearly 20 years ago. Industry Initiatives for Science and Math Education, otherwise known as IISME, was founded in 1985 as the result of a partnership between Silicon Valley industry leaders and scientists at the Lawrence Hall of Science at UC-Berkeley.

Jennifer Bruckner, executive director of IISME, says the founders were concerned with the levels of science and math in education and how the two subjects were being taught.

"Our primary focus is an educational mission," she says. "If teachers get to work in research in a lab over the summer, and their curriculum involves lab work, they get to bring the things they learned back to the classroom." And IISME helps teachers accomplish this with a built-in support system.

Over the years, the popularity of the program among Bay Area teachers and participating companies has skyrocketed. What was once a program restricted to high school science teachers has expanded to include all teachers in grades K­12 and at the community college level.

And it's common for companies to take on multiple teachers.

Synopsys Inc. of Mountain View, an electronic software company, hosted five teachers this summer, including Greg Campanella and Asheley Frogner, both teachers with the Cupertino Union School District.

Campanella, an eighth-grade physical science teacher at Cupertino Middle School, has taught with the district for 34 years. This was his sixth year with IISME. "What initially attracted me was the eight weeks of pay," he says. "At the time, I was the sole provider [for my family]. I'm very selfish now," he adds with a laugh. For Campanella, being selfish involves the broadening of his technical knowledge. "Every year, I have learned a new skill." His daughter Gina, who is a teacher at Archbishop Mitty High School in San Jose, also participated in IISME this summer.

Frogner is coming into the IISME experience in a much different manner than Campanella—the third-grade teacher at Collins Elementary is just entering her third year of teaching. For her, the money was a huge reason for choosing IISME. "I had to work this summer," she explains. "I bought a townhouse nine months ago."

Participating businesses also enjoy the practical benefits.

Both teachers filled in gaps at Synopsys. Campanella was one of a quartet of fellows who worked with the information technology department to improve and standardize its documentation as part of an internal audit. The various processes provided some confusion. "It was like coming into a foreign land," he says with a week left in the program. "It took two weeks to get a foundation, but now we're very comfortable in what we're doing."

Frogner was more of an event planner, helping program a weeklong seminar for professors interested in teaching Synopsys technology. "I feel like I've really been an asset this summer," she says.

While neither of the Cupertino teachers worked in an explicitly technical field, they both said their office experience taught them skills to take back to the classroom. Bruckner said that this is precisely the point of IISME. No matter the grade level or area of expertise, every IISME teacher is responsible for forming an Education Transfer Plan, which takes skills learned on the job and translates them into teaching. There are curriculum-based transfers, which involve direct infusion of learned knowledge into lesson plans, or skill-based transfers, which teachers use to teach specific tools to students and fellow educators.

"The Education Transfer Plans are the whole point," Bruckner says. "They're based on the National Board [for Professional Teaching] Standards in their subject, which are like the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval." IISME hires former fellows as peer coaches, who hold community group meetings once a week with teachers in certain geographic areas to fine-tune their transfer plans. One requirement for participating companies is to allow their fellows four hours a week for transfer-plan work.

Campanella and Frogner are both implementing skill-based transfers. This year, Campanella worked extensively with Microsoft Office and hopes to teach his students how to stage presentations via PowerPoint instead of the standard written report. Frogner's work taught her the importance of working together as a team, which is something she hopes to impart to her fellow teachers as well as her students. "It's hard for a third grader," she says. "I have a plan of team-building activities to jump-start how they work with people," using something like the ropes courses meant to build corporate teamwork. And, as Campanella says, "Learning how this industry works is great, because so many students in Cupertino are going into this industry."

However, carrying out the transfer plans is not always easy. "A lot of teachers come out of the summer with great ideas, but they don't have the resources," Bruckner says. So during the school year, IISME works on following up with teachers to make sure their transfer plans are going through. IISME's Fund for Innovation awards grants to teachers who complete an Education Transfer Plan write-up, complete with student comments. IISME also holds seminars to help teachers develop technical skills throughout the year.

And, of course, teacher and sponsor recruitment has already begun for 2004. While students may already be counting down the days until their next summer vacation, their teachers are looking forward to going back to their own kind of school.

Bruckner says IISME still finds itself with a surplus of interested, qualified teachers each year despite blossoming interest among all parties over the years. "We can't be equally successful with companies—they have to pay," she explains. Each teacher can cost a sponsoring company $11,000—less if IISME is the employer of record. Financial benefactors such as NASA-Ames Research Center and Columbia University pick up the tab for the rest of the fellowship cost.

But in these difficult economic times, Bruckner says there are three times as many interested applicants as there are slots for them to take. Unfortunately, one aspect of IISME affected by the sour economy has been the number of companies able to ante up.

One such company is Advanced Micro Devices of Sunnyvale, which has been involved with IISME since the early 1990s. "It's a challenge right now. We want to place interns in meaningful positions," acknowledges Brenda Hendricksen, AMD's liaison with IISME. One former teacher is helping AMD with that goal this year. Mike Hill, director of learning and development, is the one AMD mentor who took on an IISME fellow this summer.

"I remember those classrooms," Hill says with a grin. He taught high school in New York for four years before turning to the tech industry. He now works with developing technology for Flash memory cards, like those used in digital cameras. His IISME fellow, Susan Diaz, is a teacher at Sunnyvale Middle School, and this was her second summer working with AMD. "It takes a certain kind of individual," Hill says. "One side benefit is an energy that you don't get from people who are here all the time." Diaz easily fit into the AMD dynamic, and like his previous IISME fellows, she has not disappointed the company. "It's probably hard on someone to work 8 to 5 who isn't used to it, but they adjust. My experience has always been positive," he says.

Many founding companies still participate in the program, including SBC and Lockheed Martin, which sponsored 25 IISME fellows this summer.

The Silicon Valley Manufacturing Group has also recruited its members to serve as IISME sponsors, and their companies offered 93 percent of this summer's fellowships. A number of groups provide in-kind support, including Agilent, which houses the IISME offices in Santa Clara. Bruckner also pinpoints a few organizations that impress IISME with their savvy recruiting and interview processes.

The IISME process is itself initiated by the applicant teacher. They must have two years of teaching under their belts and live in the Bay Area—as far north as Marin County and as far south as Santa Cruz. Interested teachers start applying in November for the following summer, and after interested Silicon Valley companies create internships in various fields, the organizations look for the right match on the IISME website.

"It's the summertime. We're revamping things for the fall," Hill explains. "There's been work to do, so this is an inexpensive solution." Companies are just paying for a temporary employee, so they don't have to pay benefits. IISME also helps organizations by serving as the employer and guiding interested parties to fit job descriptions around teachers' qualifications, including ensuring that the fellows are not stuck doing clerical work. "What we're hoping is that they take something back to the community," Hill says.

Diaz spent the summer using her training as a computer teacher to help his department upgrade its Flash courses to a computer-based training framework and reconstruct its webpage. "Susan knows how to build webpages, which is something we normally have people outsource," Hill says. He had worked with Diaz last summer, which made the selection process fairly easy. Most companies pull seven or eight resumes for one position and select their fellows through their own interview process. AMD, like Synopsys, places a huge emphasis on reaching out to the teachers and schools in their community. "We believe that what makes the most impact on the students is the quality of the teacher in the classroom," Hendricksen says.

Fellows and mentors gathered at the IISME End of Summer Celebration on Aug. 7 at Roche Palo Alto, where the 2003 fellows relaxed with food and wine. Bruckner and other IISME officials applauded their summer of hard work that refreshed them for the new school year. The teachers are entering a group of IISME alumni who are twice as likely to stay in teaching and twice as likely to obtain National Board certification.

"We're proud to work with so many talented teachers—their dedication to improving their teaching and the quality of instruction in their classrooms is an inspiration," Bruckner says. "Giving up a summer vacation to work in a completely foreign environment takes courage and confidence, but the rewards are great."