Engineering for Educators course takes mystery out of in demand field
The students in UA’s Engineering for Educators course mentored Boys and Girls Club members during a week-long Think Tank to Shark Tank entrepreneurial camp.
It’s no secret that engineers are in demand in the U.S., and educators know that many students begin to lose interest in math and science around middle school.
“If we are going to continue to innovate as a country, truly innovate, we need a diverse group of scientists and engineers to get there,” says Engineering for Educators co-instructor Dr. Edward Evans, associate professor of chemical engineering. “It’s critical to understand the importance of educating in STEM and to support research.”
The Engineering for Educators course at The University of Akron is tackling the issue head on by training current educators in engineering principles and equipping them with the answer to a question some find intimidating: What is engineering?
“The goal of the class is to provide educators with the resources and confidence needed to teach engineering concepts in their classrooms,” says Engineering for Educators co-instructor Karen Plaster, clinical instructor in the College of Education.
The course covers conceptual engineering concepts centered on the engineering design process. The first week is spent learning the process of discovering pain points, or societal problems, and demonstrating hands-on projects that can be replicated in the classroom.
In the second week of class, students use what they learn to run aweek-long entrepreneurial camp, called Think Tank to Shark Tank. This year, 5-8th graders in the Boys and Girls Clubs of the Western Reserve participated in the camp.
“The impact The University of Akron students had on the members of the Boys and Girls Club has been amazing,” says James Warner II, Boys and Girls Club director of the Lebron James Club. “Partnership like this are essential to inspire and enable these local kids to reach their full potential.”
Each day, the camp started with a 30-minute project to get Boys and Girls Club members thinking about things like design constraints and the need to build small-scale models to test concepts. The participants were then guided by UA students to devise solutions to problems identified by group members. By the end of the week, campers created business plans, commercials and presentations for business ideas that ranged from headphones that light up to the bass of a song to a product called “Crazy Doodles,” crayons that won’t break because they’re flexible or roll away because they magnetized to attach to the crayon box.
The Engineering for Educator students created lessons plans for the week and put together a unit to use in their own classroom.
“As an English and writing educator, this course taught me that engineering is science with a purpose,” says Joe Rock, an English teacher at Central Catholic High School in Cleveland. “Every class in a high school curricula should have a clear value and purpose.”
Rock plans to incorporate the principles he learned into his classroom as his students begin to study Shakespeare’s Macbeth in the fall. An interactive wind activity with fans and bubbles will represent the cauldron in the first scene of the play and allow students to experience the story in a new way, Rock says.
“Teachers are on the front lines and have a huge impact on students,” says Plaster. “The better they understand engineering principles and the importance of the design process, the better.”