Southwest Middle School teacher earns Northrop Grumman teaching fellowship

DR. PHILLIPS  When Corydon Strawser was serving in the U.S. Navy, he flew the Grumman A-6 aircraft for 14 years.

Now a sixth-grade science teacher at Southwest Middle School, Strawser recently made another connection with Grumman: He’s one of just three teachers in the state — and 27 in the country — to be named a Northrop Grumman Teaching Fellow.

Northrop Grumman is a global aerospace and defense technology company. And in 2015, the company’s foundation and National Science Teachers Association co-founded the Northrop Grumman Foundation Teachers Academy. The academy provides professional learning experiences to middle-school teachers so they can better foster their students’ interest in engineering.

Strawser, who has taught at Southwest Middle for four years, always has had a passion for science. He holds a bachelor’s degree in biology from Earlham College and a master’s degree in divinity from Asbury Theological Seminary. He currently is working on a master’s degree in education at Southern New Hampshire University. 

The STEM teacher applied for the program in early October and learned he was named a teaching fellow at the end of November.

“The program is really designed to allow teachers like myself to experience 21st-century skills and engineering in the Northrop Grumman way,” he said. “Every engineering firm does engineering a certain way, and we get to experience it. It’s quite an honor. There’s a lot of workshops and knowledge that will be passed, so this is a really great thing.”

As part of the program, Strawser will attend the National Science Teachers Association conference in March the week before spring break, where he will meet the other teaching fellows and science colleagues throughout the country.

In June, he will travel to Northrop Grumman’s headquarters in Los Angeles to get a glimpse of how the company operates, as well as learn more about its engineering philosophy and the kind of skills it is looking for in prospective employees.

“When they (the companies) ask engineers who are in college when they decided they wanted to be an engineer, the consistent answer is when they’re in middle school,” Strawser said. “We’re (middle-school science teachers) the ground by which they’ll plant some mustard seeds. … We know there are hard skills they look for — engineering, science and math — but they will tell you that there’s a whole series of soft skills that aren’t always taught in schools, like collaboration, critical thinking and problem-solving. One of the big ones now is global awareness, because all of these companies now are global.”

In July, Strawser will spend two weeks at the local Northrop Grumman facility to participate in an 80-hour immersive externship, where he will be partnered with an engineer/technologist.

Ultimately, he take everything he learned right back to his students at Southwest Middle through lesson plans and lab experiments. Strawier said he is looking forward to integrating these lessons into the school’s current STEM curriculum and sharing them among the science department.

“First of all, I was thrilled,” Strawser said of discovering he was chosen to participate in the academy. “It was an honor. I love teaching science, because I’m so passionate about the content, but more than anything else, I’m also passionate about these kids. That’s what your hoping for — to ignite the kids’ minds (and creativity). I have 158 students each day, and that means I get an opportunity to influence 158 minds.”