1. Engineers of Tomorrow Jilliane Brinkman William Wandro
Industrial & Manufacturing Systems Engineering
Mentor: Prashant Rajan
Department of English | Communication Studies

2. K-12 STEM Education Focus on future STEM majors in college
STEM careers
Increased math and science skills
Development of problem solving skills

3. Purpose Passion project Prior experiences with elementary education
How can concepts/topics from Industrial Engineering be made relevant and accessible to elementary school students?
Introducing engineering optimization strategies into elementary school classrooms.

4. Currently Available Engineering is Elementary (Cunningham, 2009)
Beautiful but expensive
Can we design frugal solutions?
Project Lead the Way (Bottoms & Uhn, 2005)
Not every school has access
Access for all enabled by individual and collaborative effort

5. Formulation Activity integrated into day’s lesson plan
Problem solving strategies from IE 312: Optimization
Current learning objectives implemented in classroom

6. The Intervention Step 1 How old is the tree? Step 2 No activity
Group A (N=12)
Group B (N=12)
Step 1
How old is the tree?
Step 2
No activity
Anchor Chart, Books
Step 3
Free time
Step 4
Application exercise

7. Step 1: How old is the tree?
“I don’t know”
“Cuz it looked pretty old.”
“Because it has cracks in it, and you said it’s a tree.”
“It looked like it was 1,000 years old. It was lighter.”
“Cuz I am five years old, then I just guessed a number.”
“I like the top because it is clean.”
“It looked really old on the bottom. The top and sides were dirty too.”
“Because I just looked at it and it looked like its 100.”

8. Step 1: Prior to Intervention
Reasoning: dirty wood samples, the size of the cross-section, or the knots on the bark

9. Group B Step 2 Tree books Definition class activity
Tree description worksheet

10. Variability in student ability
Formative
Excellent

11. Intervention Anchor chart Final age of trees Age activity
Subtraction Method
Anchor chart

12. Group B Step 3: How old is the tree?
Max age of trees: 10s to 100 years old
Min age of trees: 1 and seed
Reasoning:
There were not many rings inside the tree
The tree did not seem very big
Now capable of subtraction based on components

13. Group B Step 4: Application exercise
Formative
Excellent

14. Group B Step 4: Subtraction Method

15. Feedback Anchor chart: Understood each step
Related each step to original problem
Recall:
Purpose of activity
Finalize a solving method
Reception:
Excited to learn about tree age
Fun to count rings and answer

16. References
Bottoms, G., & Uhn, J. (2007). Project Lead the Way works: A new type of career and technical program. Atlanta, GA: Southern Regional Education Board.
Cunningham, C. M. (2009). Engineering is elementary. The Bridge, 30(3),