Katie Davenport '05 named a Knowles Science Teaching Foundation Fellow

by Stacey Kutish
10/5/2009

Katie Davenport '05 has been named a recipient of a Knowles Science Teaching Foundation Awards Fellowship. The fellowship will afford her tuition assistance to pursue a Masters Degree in Education, stipends for professional development with structured mentor relationships, and the opportunity for engagement with new curricula and teaching methods.

Davenport first felt a spark of interest in science during her senior year of high school when an organic chemistry teacher "showed [her] that science can shine a light on everyday life the same way poetry does, lending beauty to the most ordinary things." Katie carried that enthusiasm for the sciences forward into her time at Swarthmore, where she was a biology major and was awarded the The Leo M. Leva Memorial Prize in Biology.

After graduation, she taught for two years at Princeton Latin Academy in Princeton, New Jersey, where the school's headmaster became her mentor. "He taught me that kids need so much more than knowledge: they need a strong, caring, healthy adult presence in their lives that they can both look up to and struggle against."

The Knowles Science Teaching Foundation (KSTF) was established by Janet H. and C. Harry Knowles in 1999 to strengthen the quality of science and mathematics teaching in United States high schools. Major criteria in the selection of Teaching Fellows include: exceptional content knowledge; commitment to teaching; ability to teach; and leadership. Applications are reviewed by KSTF program staff and by a judging panel of highly accomplished scientists, mathematicians and educators. Davenport is one of just eight recipients of Fellowships in biological sciences in 2009.