CACHE and Freshman/High School Engineering

UTeachEngineering  Changing backgrounds of engineering freshmen  Overview of Texas program  Progress to date  Plans for the coming year and interaction with CACHE Preparing Secondary Teachers to Deliver Design-Based Engineering Courses

Impacts of high school engineering on engineering freshmen  More than 3000 high schools are delivering the most widely used program – Project Lead the Way  High school engineering is growing rapidly and within the next few years more than 100,000 students will be graduating each year having had a high school engineering experience  US Colleges of engineering graduate approximately 75,000 graduates per year  How should high school programs be designed to lead into university engineering programs, particularly freshman programs?

Unique experiment underway in Texas  4 x 4 Math and Science Requirement  A consistent high school curriculum will be developed over the next several years; estimated enrollments of 25,000 students per year  Need curriculum  Need teachers

A Unique Partnership + +

UTeachEngineering’s First 5 Years  $12.5 million partnership grant from NSF  650 teachers across Texas and beyond 570 current science and math teachers prepared to teach high school engineering 80 new teachers prepared to teach STEM  A model for preparing secondary engineering educators and designing high school curricula

UTeachEngineering  Program for Pre-Service Teachers Teaching certification for undergraduates in engineering and the sciences Begins Fall 2009  Programs for In-Service Teachers Summer Institutes Masters Programs Began Summer 2009

Programs for In-Service Teachers  Engineering Summer Institutes for Teachers  Master of Arts in Science and Engineering Education

Engineering Summer Institutes for Teachers (ESIT)  Rapid path (one summer) for in-service teachers  Two courses over six weeks will lead teachers to experience and understand engineering  Online resources support teachers during the year  Dissemination at five universities statewide UT Dallas and UT El Paso offered ESIT in summer 2009 Other schools to join beginning in 2010  More than 50 teachers participated in summer 2009 in Austin, Dallas and El Paso  Each teacher will contribute a lesson plan to an on-line library

Programs for In-Service Teachers  Engineering Summer Institutes for Teachers  Master of Arts in Science and Engineering Education

Master of Arts in Science and Engineering Education (MASEE)  Developing master teachers in secondary engineering education  Longer path, greater depth Three summers at UT (nine weeks each) Two academic years of online study  Online resources support teachers during the year  Each MA candidate completes an engineering project and has opportunities for extensive lesson plan development

UTeachEngineering  Changing backgrounds of engineering freshmen  Overview of Texas program  Progress to date  Plans for the coming year and proposed interaction with CACHE/AIChE

Plans for coming year and interaction with CACHE  Model year-long curriculum to be developed for Austin ISD then deployed in all high schools of the district in (~10,000 high school graduates per year) – multiple 6-9 week segments - what should be the chemical engineering component?  Create working group to review draft material  Lesson plans currently under development allow for detailed lesson plan development. What chemical engineering modules could be developed?  Identify faculty willing to interact with teachers

Summary and Discussion