Kelly Crittenden

A model for high-school teacher professional development and student learning

This paper describes a model for high-school teacher professional development and student learning that can be readily adapted by other universities seeking meaningful partnerships with K-12 schools. In this program, university engineering and science faculty work collaboratively with high school teachers to present challenging engineering design projects to high school students. Our program consists of a series of Teacher Workshops for high school teachers, each followed by a Discovery Weekend with their students, and culminating in a challenge weekend. Each project includes a thorough integration of mathematics, science and engineering, thereby leading to a much deeper understanding of how the mathematics and science topics taught in high school are related to engineering design. This approach has led to increased confidence in the high school teachers, increased interest in STEM topics among the students, and a heightened awareness of the role engineering can play in meeting the challenges facing our society. The collaboration between university faculty and high school teachers maximizes the benefit to the students by having both their regular teachers and university faculty directly involved in their projects. It also effectively demonstrates to the students how diverse teams can often provide better solutions to problems.

Work in progress — Using a “cigar box” guitar to teach waves and sound in a high school physics program

NASA-Threads is a full length high school physics program developed by Louisiana Tech University faculty with support from NASA. NASA-Threads is a partnership between K-12 schools and Louisiana Tech University that aims to improve high school student achievement in mathematics and science. This partnership will result in better prepared students entering science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) programs at the university level. Our previous experiences with K-12 program development have shown that long-term impact on students comes through close collaborative relationships between their teachers and university faculty. This paper presents how mathematics and science fundamentals are shown through the construction of a cigar box guitar. Tuning the guitar further develops the physics concepts of sounds, frequency, and waves.

High school teacher development workshops that create long-term student impact

Increasing the number of STEM graduates is critical to our nations future. High school teachers play an essential role in accomplishing this goal by preparing and encouraging students to pursue STEM fields in college. This paper describes a series of workshops, referred to as TechSTEP, that focus on equipping teachers with tools, techniques, and skills they can immediately implement in their classrooms so as to better prepare students to successfully pursue STEM degrees. The specific workshop described in this paper involves building prototype fuel cell vehicles. In addition to the science of fuel cells and the engineering involved in vehicle design, the project also incorporates a model for natural resource depletion and includes other related economic, environmental, social, and political issues. The ultimate goal of TechSTEP is to increase the number of students successfully pursuing STEM degrees at the university. Even though TechSTEP includes high school students, the primary focus is on high school teachers. We believe long-term impact is more likely to result from the interactions and relationships developed with these teachers. On average, there has been a 39% increase in the number of students enrolling in STEM majors at Louisiana Tech University from schools participating in TechSTEP.