Message from Dr. Anant Kukreti
“Hello and welcome to STEMucation Academy! Our on-site and online workshops fill the gap between the science and mathematics practice standards and the practices of engineering design. When you incorporate engineering design into your classroom, it enables student engagement through the use of hands-on problem solving. With coaching support and an online community of STEM teachers, these onsite and online workshops will train you to develop, implement, teach and revise standards-based curriculum. You will better understand how to create learning environments that engage students in “doing” and encourage your students’ active participation in their own learning.”
Dr. Kukreti's Bio
Anant was the Principal Investigator of the NSF funded projects, the “Cincinnati Engineering Enhanced Math and Science (CEEMS) Partnership Program” and the I-Corps for Learning Project, “Training Teachers to Use Engineering as a Context for Learning,” at the University of Cincinnati (UC), Cincinnati, Ohio, USA, from which STEMucation Academy evolved. He is Professor Emeritus of Engineering at UC since August 2018. Prior to retirement he was the Professor and Director for Engineering Outreach in the College of Engineering and Applied Science at UC, and oversaw the College’s K-21 Pathway Programs, and undergraduate and graduate enrichment programs.
Besides CEEMS, Anant also executed the NSF-funded Research Experiences for Teachers (RET)Site Programs at UC from 2006 to 2018. The primary vision of his CEEMS and RET Programs was to establish a cadre of teachers, who will implement, the authentic articulation of engineering with science and mathematics in K-12 grade classrooms. These programs also afforded a much-needed opportunity to study how students learn mathematics and science content if engineering is used as the context and when challenge-based learning (CBL) and engineering design process (EDP) are used as the classroom instructional practices.
In CEEMS, 88 primarily grades 6-12 teachers developed, taught and documented 327 curricular units that utilize CBL and EDP and align to content standards, and impacted more than 18,000 grade students. In RET, 138 K-12 teachers participated who impacted over 4,600 students through the units which integrated their summer research experiences conducted under the guidance of dedicated engineering faculty members and graduate research assistants into the math and science courses they taught during the following school year.
Anant has won 5 major university teaching awards, two Professorships, and two national American Society of Engineering Education teaching awards.
Message from Jack Broering
“STEMucation Academy is an excellent professional development program for teachers who would like to bring engineering-oriented lessons to their classrooms. During my career as an engineer, I found there were many skills that I learned as an engineer that align exceptionally well with the 21stCentury Skills we seek to impart to our K – 12 students today. As the Program Coordinator, my role is to help you by answering questions about the program, helping you with the enrollment process, aligning you with an experienced Coach, and ultimately helping make you successful as you complete one or our four workshops.”
Jack Broering's Bio
Jack’s experience as a Resource Team Mentor for the Cincinnati Engineering Enhanced Math & Science (CEEMS) project (2012 to 2018) prepared him well to serve in the role of Program Coordinator. He retired from The Dow Chemical Company in 2009 where he worked for 34 years after graduating from the University of Dayton with a Chemical Engineering degree in 1975.
Contributions to the CEEMS project included mentoring 26 math and science teachers both during the summer training program and during the school year as teachers delivered their units to their students. Mentorship included providing feedback on the units they developed, their related videos and posters as well as the instructional techniques they used in the classroom.
During the development of STEMucation Academy, Jack gained valuable entrepreneurial experience made possible by the NSF Innovation Corp (i-Corp-L). The i-Corp-L training provided real-world, hands-on, immersive learning about what it takes to successfully transfer knowledge into products and processes that benefit society. As the i-Corp-L Team Mentor, Jack worked with 3 team members to interview over 100 teachers and administrators to gain their perspectives on what a successful program would look like. As such, our innovative training workshops named STEMucation Academy was created.
CHALLENGE
Nationwide, K-12 students are underperforming in STEM and disengaged from the learning process
SOLUTION
STEMucation: An online, professional development program for educators to learn how to design and implement standards-based STEM units
BENEFITS
Educators learn the process, develop the units, personalize the lessons, and improve student engagement and learning outcomes
OPTIONS
- 1 & 3 day workshops at your site
- Introductory & Advanced Online workshops
- Custom designed workshops
Personal coaches to assist in unit development, implementation & post-unit reflection
TESTIMONIALS
“This training gave me enough of an understating of the Engineering Design process to guide my students.”
“Students’ learning curve increased greatly compared to the way I used to teach.”
“I have an edge on what it takes to achieve the rating of ‘Accomplished’ on the Teacher Performance Evaluation rubric.”
CHALLENGE BASED LEARNING
Challenge-Based Learning (CBL) methodology fosters student teamwork, higher student engagement, and improved learning outcomes. The Engineering Design Process (EDP) guides and informs the challenge solution as an open-ended problem, providing student teams an opportunity to refine, improve, and optimize their original designs, implement the most efficient solution, and communicate and defend this solution. STEMucation Academy takes teachers through each of the following steps to develop, implement, and refine a, integrated CBL-EDP unit that meets STEM practice standards.
