First Year Experience from RET Site: High School Teacher Experience in Engineering Design and Manufacturing

Francisco Robles Hernandez; Kamran Alba; Burak Basaran; Medhat El Nahas; Weihang Zhu; Zheng Fan

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Conference: 2022 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition
Location: Minneapolis, MN
Publication Date: August 23, 2022
Start Date: June 26, 2022
End Date: June 29, 2022
Conference Session: Design Experiences in Manufacturing Education
Page Count: 12
DOI: 10.18260/1-2--40600
Permanent URL: https://peer.asee.org/40600
Download Count: 193

Paper Authors

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Weihang Zhu University of Houston

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Professor in Mechanical Engineering Technology at University of Houston

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Zheng Fan

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Francisco Robles Hernandez University of Houston, College of Technology (MERGED MEMBERSHIP WITH COE)

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Dr Robles has a Bachelor, a Master and a PhD of Science degrees in Materials Science and Engineering. Dr. Robles has more than 20 years of research and industrial experience in Materials Science, Engineering and Manufacturing. He authors more than 110 peer review papers, 140 conferences presentations, 5 patents, 4 conference proceedings, and major reports for US Government, etc. During his career Dr. Robles had the opportunity to work for the Transportation Technology Center, Inc. (TTCI) as a Manager and a Principal Investigator of research projects with budgets of approximately 1 MUSD/year. In August 2008 he started his tenured track career at the University of Houston at the College of Technology as an Assistant Professor, in 2014 he became Associated Professor with Tenure, he was the graduate program coordinator from 2009 to 2014 and he became professor in 2020. He is an adjunct faculty at Rice University since 2018

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Dr. Kamran Alba received his Ph.D. from the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of British Columbia in Canada in 2013. He then briefly worked in R&D sector of Schlumberger Denmark A/S. Dr. Alba then started his career as Assistant Professor at the Engineering Technology Department of the University of Houston in 2015, promoted to the Associate Professor rank in 2021. His research area include fluid mechanics, rheology, as well as particulate and multiphase flows. Dr. Alba has received numerous research funding from industry as well as federal agencies such as National Science Foundation, published over 50 peer-reviewed publications in his field, and served as reviewer for over 20 fluid-mechanics related journals.

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Abstract

In 2019, University of Houston (UH) at Houston, Texas was awarded an NSF Research Experience for Teachers (RET) site grant titled “RET Site: High School Teacher Experience in Engineering Design and Manufacturing.” The goal of the project is to host 12 high school teachers each summer to participate in engineering design and manufacturing research and then convert their experience into high school curriculum. In summer of 2021, the first cohort of 12 teachers from Region 4 of Southeast Texas participated in the RET program at UH College of Technology (COT). This six-week program, open to local high school STEM teachers in Texas, sought to advance educators’ knowledge of concepts in design and manufacturing as a means of enriching high school curriculums and meeting foundational standards set by 2013’s Texas House Bill 5. These standards require enhanced STEM contents in high school curricula as a prerequisite for graduation, detailed in the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills standard. Due to the pandemic situation, about 50% of the activities are online and the rest are face to face. About 40% of the time, teachers attended online workshops to enhance their knowledge of topics in engineering design and manufacturing before embarking on applicable research projects in the labs. Six UH COT engineering technology professors each led workshops in a week. The four tenure-track engineering mentors, assisted by student research assistants, each mentored three teachers on projects ranging from additive manufacturing to thermal/fluids, materials, and energy. The group also participated in field trips to local companies including ARC Specialties, Master Flo, Re:3D, and Forged Components. They worked with two instructional track engineering technology professors and one professor of education on applying their learnings to lesson plan design. Participants also met weekly for online Brown Bag teacher seminars to share their experiences and discuss curricula, which was organized by the RET master teacher. On the final day of the program, the teachers presented their curriculum prototype for the fall semester to the group and received completion certificates. The program assessment was led by the assessment specialist, Director of Assessment and Accreditation at UH COT. Teacher participants found the research experience with their mentors beneficial not only to them, but also to their students according to our findings from interviews. The mentors will visit their mentees’ classrooms to see the lesson plans being implemented. In the spring of 2022, the teachers will present their refined curricula at a RET symposium to be organized at UH and submit their standards-aligned plans to teachengineering.org for other K-12 educators to access.

Citation
Format

Zhu, W., & Fan, Z., & Robles Hernandez, F., & El Nahas, M., & Basaran, B., & Alba, K. (2022, August), First Year Experience from RET Site: High School Teacher Experience in Engineering Design and Manufacturing Paper presented at 2022 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Minneapolis, MN. 10.18260/1-2--40600

TY - CPAPER
AB - In 2019, University of Houston (UH) at Houston, Texas was awarded an NSF Research Experience for Teachers (RET) site grant titled “RET Site: High School Teacher Experience in Engineering Design and Manufacturing.” The goal of the project is to host 12 high school teachers each summer to participate in engineering design and manufacturing research and then convert their experience into high school curriculum. In summer of 2021, the first cohort of 12 teachers from Region 4 of Southeast Texas participated in the RET program at UH College of Technology (COT). This six-week program, open to local high school STEM teachers in Texas, sought to advance educators’ knowledge of concepts in design and manufacturing as a means of enriching high school curriculums and meeting foundational standards set by 2013’s Texas House Bill 5. These standards require enhanced STEM contents in high school curricula as a prerequisite for graduation, detailed in the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills standard. Due to the pandemic situation, about 50% of the activities are online and the rest are face to face. About 40% of the time, teachers attended online workshops to enhance their knowledge of topics in engineering design and manufacturing before embarking on applicable research projects in the labs. Six UH COT engineering technology professors each led workshops in a week. The four tenure-track engineering mentors, assisted by student research assistants, each mentored three teachers on projects ranging from additive manufacturing to thermal/fluids, materials, and energy. The group also participated in field trips to local companies including ARC Specialties, Master Flo, Re:3D, and Forged Components. They worked with two instructional track engineering technology professors and one professor of education on applying their learnings to lesson plan design. Participants also met weekly for online Brown Bag teacher seminars to share their experiences and discuss curricula, which was organized by the RET master teacher. On the final day of the program, the teachers presented their curriculum prototype for the fall semester to the group and received completion certificates. The program assessment was led by the assessment specialist, Director of Assessment and Accreditation at UH COT. Teacher participants found the research experience with their mentors beneficial not only to them, but also to their students according to our findings from interviews. The mentors will visit their mentees’ classrooms to see the lesson plans being implemented. In the spring of 2022, the teachers will present their refined curricula at a RET symposium to be organized at UH and submit their standards-aligned plans to teachengineering.org for other K-12 educators to access.
AU - Weihang Zhu
AU - Zheng Fan
AU - Francisco Robles Hernandez
AU - Medhat El Nahas
AU - Burak Basaran
AU - Kamran Alba
CY - Minneapolis, MN
DA - 2022/08/23
PB - ASEE Conferences
TI - First Year Experience from RET Site: High School Teacher Experience in Engineering Design and Manufacturing
UR - https://peer.asee.org/40600
DO - 10.18260/1-2--40600
ER -