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1. Board 369: Research Experiences for Teachers (RET): Engineering for People and the Planet as Inspiration to Teach Integrated STEM

   https://doi.org/10.18260/1-2--46952  

   Chen, Katherine; Taylor, Donna; Solovey, Erin (June 2024, ASEE Conferences)

   The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs) are the focus for a Research Experience for Teachers (RET) Site in Engineering at X University. The relevant and meaningful contexts of the SDGs allow middle and high school teachers and their students to easily make connections between research in a university lab setting to Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) concepts in their classroom. Lesson plans inspired by the UN SDGs research experience were developed as an “integrated STEM” problem solving activity by each of the RET teachers. Ten (10) teachers comprising of both pre-service and in-service middle or high school teachers have participated in each cohort over the two years of the NSF RET grant thus far. Six weeks of authentic summer research takes place in 5 different faculty labs at X University under the mentorship of faculty and their graduate students or postdoc. Examples of the research projects include “Photocatalysis for Clean Energy and Environment,” “Genetically Engineering Plasmid DNA molecules to address Tuberculosis Antibiotic Resistance,” and “New Water-Based Technology for Plastic Recycling.” RET participants also attend a weekly coffee session to help guide the teachers through the research process and a weekly ½-day professional development (PD) session to translate the research experience into a classroom lesson plan that aligns to state standards, as well as evidence-backed curriculum design and teaching strategies. Teacher cohort building and community is fostered through group lunches and additional activities (e.g., coordinated lab visits, behind the scenes tour of a local science museum, and industry panel). For evaluation of the RET program, pre/post-surveys measured the teacher’s self-reported ability, confidence, understanding, and frequency of use of the Engineering Design Process (EDP), Integrated STEM, and the UN Sustainable Development Goals. Formative assessment was conducted throughout the summer on various aspects of the RET through surveys and regular check-ins with the teachers. At the end of the summer, focus groups were conducted by an external evaluator for both the teacher participants and the research mentors. Both teachers and mentors declared the program was well planned and executed. The teachers developed close bonds and connections, learned a lot from each other, had meaningful research experiences, and developed a sense of community. The research mentors reported that the teachers provided useful research contributions, were enthusiastic about the research, had genuine lab experiences, developed professional skills, and built good community connections. Areas for improvement included clear expectations for everyone, reducing steep learning curves, and consistency of mentoring across the labs. The RET program continues into the academic year with occasional meetings to report on the implementation of their research-inspired lesson plan in their classroom. The RET participants share that they are bringing in the “real world” relevance to their students with an integrated STEM lens (e.g., climate change and UN SDGs) and that they refer back to their own lab experiences (e.g., importance of measuring chemicals accurately). The research experience has made several positive impacts on the teacher participants that also benefit their students. 

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2. Increasing Social Relevance to Increase Inclusion in First-Year Seminars

   Ramsey, Laura; Kling, Thomas; Deline, Alyssa; Marintcheva, Boriana; Mendell, Jennifer; Serna-Otalvaro, Samuel; Oussa, Vignon (April 2024, AAC&U)

   Research has shown that making STEM socially relevant can attract more diverse students to STEM fields. Learn to utilize the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals to center socially relevant goals in first-year seminars, as we did when constructing STEM linked-course learning communities. The seminars were designed to foster a communal view of science and mathematics, both in terms of the importance of collaboration to STEM success and the application of STEM to real-world problems. Course structures and sample materials will be shared as inspiration. Conversations will focus on helping visitors increase the social relevance of their own courses or curricula. 

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3. DuSTEM: A Comprehensive Approach to Student Success

   Thompson, Kristen; Neebel Danial; Keller, Robert (April 2022, 2021 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference)

   There is a strong need to produce more college graduates with STEM degrees when the world copes with ever changing weather patterns, a global pandemic, and other natural and man-made disasters. These graduates also need come from an ever more diverse community to ensure that the needs of all are addressed with the best possible solutions. This project seeks to attract and retain students who have the ability and with the right support structure are fully capable of being successful in a STEM degree and beyond to a STEM career including engineering. In this poster we showcase successful strategies used in the DuSTEM program at Loras college. This program grants students scholarships and academic support funded by the National Science Foundation as part of the S-STEM program. Thus far, there were 22 students who started in the first year of the program and 14 students who started in the second year. All students are academically high-achieving students who demonstrate financial need. Students major in any STEM discipline, including general engineering. In the first year, the academic supports focus on the transition from high school to college and include seminars and proactive advising. In the second year, the academic supports move improve self-efficacy and does so by incorporating work on a group community-based learning project. Thus far the project has been successful in its goals of increasing enrollment and retention as compared to the control group. In the last year, like all students, this group has been impacted by the SARS-COV2 pandemic and supports within this program have attempted to help these students stay connected to a community despite the necessity for online learning. 

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4. Education innovation to meet Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

   Trotz, M. (July 2019, 12 th Natural Resource Management & Research Symposium “BELIZE, ‘THROUGH THE BOTTLENECK’”)

   Meeting the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) requires innovations in education to build key competencies in all learners. Learning objectives for SDGs identified by UNESCO like the “Integrated problem-solving competency,” if integrated properly with high school curriculum, can contribute sustainable development solutions for Belize. Additionally, the 3rd international conference of SIDS http://www.sids2014.org) under the theme, “The sustainable development of small island developing states through genuine and durable partnerships,” stressed investment in education and training, including through partnerships with migrants and diaspora communities, with “concrete, focused, forward-looking and action oriented programmes.” The Sagicor Visionaries Challenge, a sustainability challenge launched by the Caribbean Examinations Council (CXC), the Caribbean Science Foundation, and the Ministries of Education across 12 Caribbean countries in 2012, represented an example of such a partnership that fostered many key competencies now needed for meeting the SDGs. It asked secondary school students in the Caribbean to identify a challenge facing their school and or community, propose a sustainable and innovative solution, and show how that solution uses Science Technology Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) as well as got the support of the school community. For its inaugural year, teacher and student sensitization workshops were organized in each country. Teachers supervised the student projects with support from mentors who were either local or virtual, including many members of the Caribbean diaspora. 175 projects entered the competition, representing 900 students ranging in age from 11 to 19. Experience from the inaugural year, which saw Belize’s Bishop Martin Secondary emerge the regional challenge winner, demonstrated interest by young people of the Caribbean in many of the themes listed in the SIDS outcomes like climate change, sustainable energy, disaster risk reduction, sustainable oceans and seas, food security and nutrition, water and sanitation, sustainable transportation, sustainable consumption and production, and health and non-communicable diseases. Reflection on student projects from Belize from the 2013 challenge, as well as current examples of teacher led inquiry-based projects for CXC’s School Based Assessments (SBAs), offer multiple opportunities for ensuring reef to ridge sustainable development in Belize and the rest of the Caribbean. 

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5. Developing Humanitarian Engineering Perspectives Among Underrepresented Scholars Through Engagement with the Sustainable Development Goals in Global Contexts

   Tull, R. G.; Hester, S.; Medina, Y.; Williams, D. N.; Medina, H.; Aparaka, E. T. (June 2018, ASEE Annual Conference proceedings)

   Opportunities to participate in international engagement experiences broaden students’ perspectives and perceptions of real world problems. A strong sense of “global engineering identity” can emerge when students are part of international teams that consider solutions to humanitarian challenges. To encourage retention in engineering among undergraduate and graduate students from underrepresented groups, a multi-campus team of faculty and administrators developed a plan expose students to humanitarian engineering perspectives within global contexts. Through a federally-funded program, the leaders took students to international conferences that fostered global team-based approaches to the National Academy of Engineering’s (NAE) 14 Grand Challenges, and the United Nations’ 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Students attended international conferences on three continents in 2016 and 2017. The conferences introduced students to the NAE’s Grand Challenges in plenary sessions, and the SDGs in smaller group sessions, with a charge to transform the world. Students from across the globe developed action plans to potentially address problems within their communities. Students were encouraged to consider real-life scenarios of their choice that could be further refined and potentially implemented upon return to their home countries. The structure of the small group sessions allowed students to be members of an international team, agree upon a problem to tackle, conduct early research, and propose a concrete path toward addressing one of the SDGs. Data for this project was collected through crowd-sourcing, using online student reflections. Students blogged throughout a one-week period for each of three conferences. There were 28 respondents, across the three events. Content analysis was used to disaggregate data and group similarities. Data showed that the students from the federally-funded delegation demonstrated a clear need to assist the global community. They were particularly interested in working on problems related to industry innovation, infrastructure, gender equality, sustainable cities, and communities. Students realized that approaches to solutions could not be centralized to their own country, and that their proposals had to be feasible and logical for other parts of the world. As an example, challenges with bringing clean water to remote regions and approaches to sanitation required a need to take time to learn from peers from other countries. Students were asked to provide ubiquitous solutions to the problems. They were asked to consider themselves as part of the respective communities as a means of assessing the practicality of potential approaches. Students’ perspectives changed throughout the course of the conference, as they reflected on their ability to bring global contexts to their research. After participating in these conferences, students experienced a greater awareness of sustainability. They were also inspired to experience different cultures, cultivating greater appreciation for the need to engage with the international community when sharing research. The exposure to humanitarian engineering perspectives influenced global STEM identity, while appreciating disciplines outside of engineering, e.g, psychology, social behaviors. Further, students learned that strides can be made toward solving global problems when collaborations and relationships are formed and fostered. 

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