THE INNER CITY CIVIL AND ENVIRONMENTAL ENGINEERING ACADEMY FOR SECONDARY TEACHERS AND STUDENTS

这个探索性的项目将使领先的K-12学生接触到相同的教育材料和活动，这些材料和活动极大地提高了南加州大学（USC）工程专业大一新生的保留率。这种方法在南加州大学工程系新生班级中取得了98%的留存率，包括由建筑业和无线电话等各个工程领域的知名执业工程师精心准备的讲座，以及无国界工程师等课外活动。所有现有的材料和活动将从大约400名工程新生扩大到更多的K-12学生，使用维特比工程学院远程教育网络的网络资源，这是全国最大的电子学习计划。拟议中的研究将建立一个基础设施称为？内城土木与环境工程学院？（ICCEEA），它结合了五个现有的基础设施，形成一个跨学科的城市初中和高中学生及其教师的工程学院。该学院的重点将是STEM中等教育和教师专业发展，重点是增加学生？科学素养在这个探索阶段，这项研究将仅限于特定的工程领域，如土木和环境工程，以及一些以前与南加州大学罗西尔教育学院合作的高中。所提出的方法的优点和缺点将详细记录，以便他们可以提供给其他工程学校和高中。在美国学习工程学的学生比例远远低于我们的许多经济竞争对手，提高工程学对高中生的知名度和吸引力对于增加工程学的参与至关重要。这项研究将利用教育材料和课外活动，已被证明成功地保留新生在工程和完善的电子学习分发系统的可扩展能力，以达到K-12学生。 这将有助于建立一个从高中到工程学校的大规模网络管道，并有助于重建加州和全国工程劳动力的规模和领导地位。

This exploratory project will expose leading K-12 students to the same educational materials and activities that have dramatically improved the retention of freshman in engineering at the University of Southern California (USC). This approach, which has yielded 98% retention rate in engineering freshman classes at USC, includes well-prepared lectures by well-known practicing engineers in various fields of engineering, such as the construction industry, and wireless telephones, as well as extra-curricular activities such as engineers without borders. All the existing materials and activities will be scaled up from about 400 engineering freshman to a larger number of K-12 students using the web resources of the Distance Educational Network of the Viterbi School of Engineering, the largest e-learning program in the Nation. The proposed research will build an infrastructure called the ?Inner City Civil and Environmental Engineering Academy? (ICCEEA), which combines five existing infrastructures to form an interdisciplinary engineering academy for urban middle and high school students and their teachers. The focus of the academy will be STEM secondary education and teacher professional development with an emphasis on increasing students? science literacy. In this exploratory phase, this research will be limited to a particular field of engineering, such as civil and environmental engineering, and to a few high-schools which have previously collaborated with the USC Rosier School of Education. The strengths and weaknesses of the proposed approach will be documented in detail so that they can be available to other engineering schools and high-schools. The percentage of students studying engineering in the U.S. is far lower than many of our economic competitors, and increasing the visibility and attraction of engineering to high school students is vital to increasing participation in engineering. This research will utilize the educational materials and extra-curriculum activities that have proven successful in retaining freshman in engineering and the scalable power of well-established e-learning distribution systems to reach K-12 students. This will help build a large-scale web-pipeline from high schools to engineering schools, and contribute to rebuilding the size and leadership of the engineering workforce in California and the Nation.