RET Site: Research Experience for Teachers in Manufacturing of Nano-Enabled Devices

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This RET Site at The University of Texas at Austin will engage cohorts of middle school teachers recruited from schools with high percentages of underrepresented student populations in research activities in engineering related to nanomanufacturing. The importance of the RET professional development experience focuses on the middle school teacher as the conduit to attract, recruit, and educate highly skilled future leaders -their students- to pursue STEM careers. Studies indicate it is critical to imbue student interest at the middle school level. Enhancing their lesson planning with nanomanufacturing research, teachers can provide an authentic engineering experience for their students, deciphering for students engineering and providing an opportunity for students to identify with engineers at the middle school level. Research shows that the self-identifying factor plays a significant role for middle and high school students (male and female) on their decisions to become engineers and stay in engineering professions. The lab based research experiences will meet teachers' demands for relevant, collaborative and substantive professional development that is transferable to the classroom. The intention is to create classrooms that provide all students an opportunity for hands-on, project based, and relevant learning experiences that assists students to understand, appreciate and pursue post-high school and college career STEM pathways. Teachers will be recruited in cohorts so that there is a critical mass to affect change in the school math, science, engineering, and technology culture and create an innovative ecosystem in the classrooms. Teacher cohorts will meet during the academic year after the summer programs to assess how their implementation is progressing and share experiences, successes and challenges. This RET will use the equipment, space, faculty, staff and graduate students of the NSF Nanosystems ERC NASCENT (Nanomanufacturing Systems for Mobile Computing and Mobile Energy Technologies).Over the course of the three year grant, this RET Site will engage 30 teachers from eight middle schools in the Austin, TX area in a research-driven program with a focus on structured mentored research and laboratory experiences. Senior faculty and graduate students will mentor teachers in an aspect of nanomanufacturing systems and processes, which include tool construction, materials integration, modeling and simulation, and nano-enabled device specification and evaluation that involve the fields of chemical, mechanical, electrical and materials science engineering for seven weeks during the summer. The program also includes a nanoengineering and research bootcamp (offered prior to the first week of research), instruction in curriculum design, weekly seminars and informal events to create a community among the teachers, faculty and graduate students involved. Faculty and graduate students will support teachers' implementation of their lesson plans using applications of math, science, and technology methodologies from their research and laboratory experiences. The RETs will return to their campuses and implement their lessons developed from their 7-week research experience. They will not return to their classrooms alone, however. Extensive follow up and support for teachers extends throughout the school year. Using the Central Texas regional resources in the semi-conductor industry and NASCENT Engineering Research Center resources, teachers will use a team approach to excite and educate their students about this growing industry in the region, as well as across the country. The real-world connection to nanomanufacturing will be brought to the teachers' classrooms during the school year using NASCENT faculty, graduate students, members of the NASCENT Center Industrial Advisory Board, and semi-conductor engineers from Center partners including but not limited to SAMSUNG, Tokyo Electron, 3M, and Applied Materials. There is a critical need for a diverse and skilled workforce in the semi-conductor area and RETs in this site will help fill that need at a local level with students interested and able to take on that challenge.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.