Year 2 Major Activities

Overall activities in Year 2 were, to a large extent, consistent with those of Year 1. However, we learned from the first year’s experiences and improved the program in a number of ways. In the following, we emphasize the differences from the first year.

1. Classroom implementation. Two participants of the Year 1 program implemented new course modules in classroom.

2. Teacher recruitment. We interviewed both last year’s participants and new applicants, and explicitly discussed the expectations on research and curriculum development during the interview process. We also held individual meetings with faculty mentors (three new mentors added this year), to help them understand the program and its goals, and to get their feedback on candidates. A total of 10 teachers were selected, and among them, four were returning participants and six were new. The teachers were assigned to faculty mentors based on mutual interests.

3. 7-week Summer Institute. The Summer Institute, running from June 20 through August 5, 2011, consisted of the following components:

• Orientation, which took place in the first two days of the program, to help the participants understand the expectations, learn how to work with faculty and graduate students, and appreciate the value of external evaluation.
• Research experiences. The teachers were asked to be in the lab working on research from 10am to 5pm (except during brownbag seminars and other Site-organized activities), which ensured sufficient interactions with faculty and graduate students.
• Curriculum development. Each day, the time slot of 8-10 am was specially set aside for the teachers to work on curriculum development. Dr. Jennifer Doherty, the curriculum specialist, provided one-on-one interactions with the teachers, and direct feedback on their lesson plans.
• Weekly workshops, brownbag seminars, lab tours, and field trips. A rich set of professional development activities were carried out for the teachers, many of which were geared toward effective communications, thematic research tours, and curriculum delivery.
• Oral and poster presentations. We cut down the oral presentation time and thus allowed more time for the participants to interact with the audience in the poster session. The teachers, faculty, and graduate students also met with and received feedback from NSF Program Manager, Mary Poats, during her site visit.

4. Dissemination. A notable achievement of this year was that five participants already submitted their developed curriculum materials to teachengineering.org, a nationally recognized digital library for new course materials.

5. Evaluation. Professional evaluation by a third-party evaluator, Dr. Patricia Farrell, was carried out throughout the year.

Year 2 Findings:

1. Classroom implementation of Year 1 curriculum materials. Two RET participants, John Thon and Erin Bosch, implemented their lesson plans developed during Year 1 of the program in their classrooms during Spring 2011. Thon created a curriculum unit on circuit building, including the fundamentals on circuit components and hands-on experiences (such as soldering) on assembling circuits. Bosch developed a classroom activity, where students examined how effective cleaning solutions kill bacteria.

2. Year 2 Teacher recruitment. Year 2 participants (a total of 10) reflected a good mix of returning teachers from Year 1 and new teachers. In particular, four teachers were continuing from last year, Erin Bosch (female), Adam Ford (African American) Randall Heck, and Jason Hill. New teachers included Alex Robinson, Jefferey Farell, Angela Kolonich (female), Jennifer Lovell (female), Megan Shaw (female), and Wendy Johnson (female). Interviews were conducted for all applicants. The returning teachers were selected based on their interest and their performance during last year’s program. Expectations on research and curriculum development were explicitly stated during the interviews, which proved very important in carrying out the program smoothly later in the summer. We also had separate meetings with individual faculty mentors, to prepare them for the program and understand their preferences on teachers’ background. The teachers were then assigned to the faculty mentors based on mutual interests.

3. 7-week Summer Institute.

• Orientation. The orientation was conducted with a schedule similar to Year 1, and it covered introduction to the RET site program, discussions on research and curriculum development expectations and approaches, campus tours, logistics, safety training, and mingling with faculty and graduate students.
• Research experiences and curriculum development activities. The teachers worked in the labs during each workday of a week (except field trips), typically from 10 am to 5 pm. This allowed the teachers to have sufficient interactions with faculty and graduate students, understand their research problems, and make meaningful progresses.