Techstep: Connecting High School Teachers And Students To Integrated Engineering And Science

Abstract

received his BS and PhD in BioMedical Engineering from Louisiana Tech University in 1996 and 2001 respectively. He is often involved in multidisciplinary work at Louisiana Tech, either through the Integrated Engineering Curriculum or through the IMPaCT (Innovation through Multidisciplinary Projects and Collaborative Teams) program. He is also very involved in STEM education at both the pre-college and college levels.

An Index to Aid in the Development of High School Recruitment of Future Engineering and Science Majors

“…Naturally, the total number of freshman (F total ) will be much larger than f 2 as f 2 ignores the feeder schools with less than f graduates attending as well as underestimates the total number of students from the f top feeder schools. In certain instances, it has been useful to define a proportionality constant k as F total = k f 2 We find empirically that k ranges between 6 and 9 for the College of Engineering and Science at Louisiana Tech university for each year starting in 2000. Figure 1.…”

“…Recruitment efforts in the College of Engineering and Science have been active for decades, however over the past 7 years, we have taken a more targeted approach to recruiting by developing meaningful relationships with high schools through professional development programs for their teachers. 2,3,4 These programs have demonstrated significant increases in students entering our engineering and science programs from these key schools. A number of these schools have moved above the f-index for recent years demonstrating a measure of success for these programs.…”

Poster, Nasa Threads: A Hands On, Context Based Approach To A High School Stem Course

“…The crucial component of implementing a project-based hands-on curriculum in schools is the teachers. Master teachers for the pilot curriculum were chosen from three schools that have been leaders in Louisiana Tech University's STEM Talent Expansion Program (LaTechSTEP) 19 . These three teachers serve as teaching fellows who work closely with Louisiana Tech engineering and science faculty to develop the physics curriculum.…”