Algae Grows the Future

该项目旨在培养工程师对工程解决方案的全球、经济、社会和环境影响的全面和批判性理解。在这个项目中，藻类为一系列探究性教育活动提供了基础，这些活动将科学、工程和人文学科结合在一起，以促进对工程工作更广泛背景的理解。将开展一系列具有成本效益、多学科、适应性强和可转移的实践实验，通过藻类作为可再生燃料来源、温室气体减排工具及其在废水处理中的作用的多功能性，介绍工程和科学原理。将通过提出与这些问题有关的道德、社会和环境问题以及分析建议的解决办法，纳入其他协同活动。该项目的三个主要目标是：(1)招收和留住STEM学位课程的学生；(2)提高STEM领域中代表性不足群体学生的自信和自尊；(3)开发探索利用藻类应对全球工程挑战的教育方法。这个项目将产生关于工程专业学生对工程工作概念的形成、为实践提供信息的学科、受工程解决方案影响的人群以及工程师在全球和社会背景下的角色的新知识。此外，它将促进人们对教育探究活动在培养STEM职业的自信和自尊方面所起作用的理解。通过重新想象成为一名工程师意味着什么，这个项目有可能培养出一代多样化的人，他们将自己视为工程师，并欣赏工程学除了提供技术解决方案外，还能帮助人类的能力。通过广泛的合作伙伴关系，该项目将影响K-12、社区学院和大学STEM教育水平的学生。与新泽西州卡姆登冒险水族馆水生科学中心的合作将通过以家庭为基础的科学教育和非正式的科学教育，将以藻类为基础的工程教育带到更广泛的社区。

This project addresses the need to cultivate engineers' holistic and critical understanding of the global, economic, societal and environmental impacts of engineering solutions. In this project, algae provides the basis for a collection of inquiry-based educational activities that bring together science, engineering and humanities to foster an understanding of the broader context of engineering work. A series of cost-effective, multidisciplinary, adaptable and transferrable hands-on experiments will be developed to introduce engineering and science principles through algae's versatility as a renewable fuel source, tool for greenhouse gas mitigation, and its role in the treatment of wastewater. Additional synergistic activities will be incorporated through introduction of ethical, social, and environmental issues related to these problems and analysis of proposed solutions. The three main objectives of the project are: (1) to recruit and retain students in STEM degree programs, (2) to increase self-confidence and self-esteem of students from underrepresented groups in STEM fields, and (3) to develop educational methods that explore uses of algae to address global engineering challenges. This project will generate new knowledge about the formation of engineering students' conceptions of engineering work, the disciplines that inform practice, the populations impacted by engineering solutions, and the role of the engineer in a global and societal context. In addition, it will advance understanding about the role that educational inquiry activities can serve in the development of self-confidence and self-esteem towards STEM careers. By reimagining what it means to be an engineer, this project has the potential to build a generation of diverse individuals that see themselves as engineers and appreciate engineering for its ability to help humankind in addition to the technological solutions it can provide. Through extensive partnerships, this project will impact students at the K-12, community college and university levels of STEM education. A partnership with the Center for Aquatic Sciences at the Adventure Aquarium in Camden (NJ) will bring algae-based engineering education to the broader community through family-based science education and informal science education.