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

   Zhu, W. (January 2022, 2022 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition)

   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. 

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2. Development and Application of Assessment Tools for a Research Experience for Teachers Site

   https://doi.org/10.18260/1-2--42701  

   Zhu, Weihang; Weber, Peter (June 2023, American Society of Engineering Education)

   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. Given the experience from the first year’s operation and assessment, it was noted that the extant teacher self-efficacy surveys need to be further improved according to the specific needs of RET site. As such, an updated set of assessment tools was developed to evaluate the impact of RET site on high school teacher participants. In particular, a new teacher self-efficacy survey was created from synthesizing multiple sources including Bandura’s Instrument Teacher Self-Efficacy Scale, Collective Teacher Beliefs, and Teachers’ Sense of Efficacy Scale (Ohio State Teacher Efficacy Scale). Besides the new self-efficacy survey, more specific questions were added to pre- and post-summer self-reported questionnaires to better understand the teachers’ perception and receptance of the summer experience. Interviews were conducted individually instead of using a focus group. This allows the interviewee to be more vocal during the interview, allowing more in-depth understanding of their perception for future improvement. The new assessment tools were applied to the second cohort of 12 teachers in summer 2022. The assessment results show that the assessment tools were able to effectively capture teachers’ change in perception and evaluate the affective impact of the RET site. In the future, the tools may be improved and used in similar teacher professional development activities. 

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3. Development and Assessment of a Combined REU/RET Program in Materials Science

   Salzman, N.; Ubic, R. (April 2017, ASEE Annual Conference proceedings)

   In this paper we present an evaluation and lessons learned from a joint Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) and Research Experience for Teachers (RET) program focused on energy and sustainability topics within a Materials Science and Engineering program at a public university. This program brought eleven undergraduate science and engineering students with diverse educational and institutional backgrounds and four local middle and high school teachers on campus for an 8-week research experience working in established lab groups at the university. Using the Qualtrics online survey software, we conducted pre-experience and post-experience surveys of the participants to assess the effects of participating in this summer research program. At the beginning of the summer, all participants provided their definition of technical research and described what they hoped to get out of their research experience, and the undergraduate students described their future career and educational plans. At the conclusion of the summer, a post-experience survey presented participants’ with their answers from the beginning of the summer and asked them to reflect on how their understanding of research and future plans involving research changed over the course of the summer experience. Many participants evolved a new understanding of research as a result of participating in the summer experience. In particular, they better recognized the collaborative nature of research and the challenges that can arise as part of the process of doing research. Participants acquired both technical and professional skills that they found useful, such as learning new programming languages, becoming proficient at using new pieces of equipment, reviewing technical literature, and improving presentation and communication skills. Undergraduates benefited from developing new relationships with their peers, while the teacher participants benefited from developing relationships with faculty and staff at the university. While most of the participants felt that they were better prepared for future studies or employment, they did not feel like the summer research experience had a significant impact on their future career or degree plans. Finally, while almost all of the participants described their summer research experience as positive, areas for improvement included better planning and access to mentors, as well as more structured activities for the teachers to adapt their research activities for the classroom. 

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4. Lessons Learned from Year 1 of NSF Research Experience for Teachers Site at North Dakota State University

   https://doi.org/10.18260/1-2--41948  

   Ajmera, Beena; Crary, Sarah; McGeorge, Christi (August 2022, ASEE Conferences)

   A new Research Experience for Teachers (RET) site was established in the Department of Civil, Construction, and Environmental Engineering at North Dakota State University (NDSU) with funding from the National Science Foundation Division of Engineering Education and Centers (NSF Award #1953102). The site focused on civil engineering instruction around the theme of mitigating natural disasters for secondary education (6th to 12th grade) teachers. Eight local teachers and one pre-service teacher (who comprised the first cohort) were provided with a six-week long authentic research experience during the summer, which they translated into a hands-on curriculum for their classrooms during the 2021-2022 academic year. Partnerships were developed between the host institution, area teachers and local partners from civil engineering industries. This paper will summarize the lessons learned by the authors as well as the effectiveness of the program activities to accomplish two objectives: (1) provide a deeper understanding of civil engineering and (2) develop better abilities among secondary education teachers to prepare future science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) leaders. Several strengths were identified by the authors as they reflected on the summer activities including the successes in creating strong connections between the teachers, faculty members and graduate students, and the industry partners as well as the agility of the core research team to overcome unexpected challenges. However, the reflections also revealed several areas for improvement that would increase the accessibility of the site to underserved and/or underrepresented teacher populations, better utilize the resources available and in general, improve the quality of the program and curriculum developed by the teachers. Included within this paper are suggestions that the authors would make to improve current and future RET sites. All of the teachers agreed or strongly agreed that their participation in the RET program increased their knowledge of STEM topics and specifically, civil engineering topics. The participants agreed to varying extents that they will use the information they learned from the program to teach their students and will implement the new strategies they gained to promote increased student learning about STEM topics. Furthermore, the feedback that they provided corroborated some of the same changes the authors plan to implement. 

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5. Lessons Learned from Year 1 of NSF Research Experience for Teachers Site at North Dakota State University

   Ajmera, B. (August 2022, 2022 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition)

   A new Research Experience for Teachers (RET) site was established in the Department of Civil, Construction, and Environmental Engineering at North Dakota State University (NDSU) with funding from the National Science Foundation Division of Engineering Education and Centers (NSF Award #1953102). The site focused on civil engineering instruction around the theme of mitigating natural disasters for secondary education (6th to 12th grade) teachers. Eight local teachers and one pre-service teacher (who comprised the first cohort) were provided with a six-week long authentic research experience during the summer, which they translated into a hands-on curriculum for their classrooms during the 2021-2022 academic year. Partnerships were developed between the host institution, area teachers and local partners from civil engineering industries. This paper will summarize the lessons learned by the authors as well as the effectiveness of the program activities to accomplish two objectives: (1) provide a deeper understanding of civil engineering and (2) develop better abilities among secondary education teachers to prepare future science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) leaders. Several strengths were identified by the authors as they reflected on the summer activities including the successes in creating strong connections between the teachers, faculty members and graduate students, and the industry partners as well as the agility of the core research team to overcome unexpected challenges. However, the reflections also revealed several areas for improvement that would increase the accessibility of the site to underserved and/or underrepresented teacher populations, better utilize the resources available and in general, improve the quality of the program and curriculum developed by the teachers. Included within this paper are suggestions that the authors would make to improve current and future RET sites. All of the teachers agreed or strongly agreed that their participation in the RET program increased their knowledge of STEM topics and specifically, civil engineering topics. The participants agreed to varying extents that they will use the information they learned from the program to teach their students and will implement the new strategies they gained to promote increased student learning about STEM topics. Furthermore, the feedback that they provided corroborated some of the same changes the authors plan to implement. 

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