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Empowering the Future: Integrating Invention and Intellectual Property Education in P-12 Engineering to Foster Innovation

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Conference

2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Location

Portland, Oregon

Publication Date

June 23, 2024

Start Date

June 23, 2024

End Date

July 12, 2024

Conference Session

Flanders' Fellowship: Building STEM Community Impact, Hi-Diddly-Ho!

Tagged Division

Pre-College Engineering Education Division (PCEE)

Tagged Topic

Diversity

Page Count

10

DOI

10.18260/1-2--47253

Permanent URL

https://peer.asee.org/47253

Download Count

22

Paper Authors

biography

Marie Anne Aloia Bayonne High School

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Marie is an alternate route teacher with an educational background in math, physics, chemical engineering and computer science. As the first girl in her family to go to college, and maybe to prove a point, she earned two bachelors degrees, one from Montclair State University and one from New Jersey Institute of Technology. After 26 years in industry an unexpected layoff came at a bad time, she was recently widowed. It was time for something completely different. She accepted a job teaching chemistry and physics at Bayonne High School. Since then she was able to write curriculum for a science research program and an engineering program. Now she teaches mostly pre-college engineering. She also brought in many new programs to her school including FIRST Tech Challenge, Lemelson InvenTeam, Technology Students Association, and Society for Science with a local science fair and ISEF.

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Kathryn Hoppe

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Abstract

Over the years, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has been engaging the P-12 Education Community and fostering relationships with prominent invention-focused organizations such as the Lemelson Foundation, Society for Science, and FIRST. In the last decade momentum was gained with the Kids and Educators website featuring stories of inventors, young entrepreneurs with cool patents, famous inventor trading cards and games to teach Intellectual Property (IP). It made its debut at the inaugural National Summer Teacher Institute (NSTI) in 2014. Fast forward to 2022, the USPTO established the Master Teachers of Invention and Intellectual Property (MTIP) program to reach a broader audience of teachers. Many teachers who were veterans of NSTI in past years joined the first cohort of teacher leaders. At the same time the USPTO Kids and Educators website underwent a comprehensive transformation to include all their outreach programs, and EquIP HQ, a new collection of curriculum and ready-made lesson plans, which is still evolving. This paper will broadly outline the efforts of the USPTO and specifically its effect on one teacher’s engineering classroom. The educator has been in a longstanding relationship with the USPTO since 2008 integrating IP lessons into her curriculum. In 2014 she attended NSTI, in 2018, advised a Lemelson InvenTeam, and is now an MTIP participant. Aligned with the USPTO’s goals, her engineering classes have been increasingly enriched in the areas of intellectual property, invention education, diversity and inclusion, and educational equity.

Aloia, M. A., & Hoppe, K. (2024, June), Empowering the Future: Integrating Invention and Intellectual Property Education in P-12 Engineering to Foster Innovation Paper presented at 2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Portland, Oregon. 10.18260/1-2--47253

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