Columns:: Digest

since 12/15/98

Columns::June 16, 2003

Digest

Grant helps improve engineering education
Professors in UGA’s College of Education and the department of biological and agricultural engineering have received a $100,000 grant from the National Science Foundation. The grant will help teams of educators design and implement engineering-related instructional materials for students in grades kindergarten-12.
To facilitate the creation of these materials a Summer Engineering Education Institute was held at UGA earlier this month. More than 40 high school students and university faculty, participating in a variety of classroom and lab-based activities, were introduced to innovative strategies for using engineering concepts and applications in secondary and post-secondary instruction.
Through the development of the institute, the grant team will work to build instructional curricula to focus on integrating engineering content with mathematics, science and technology education. The goal is to motivate academically qualified high school 12th graders to seriously consider engineering majors in college.
“From the secondary level, there’s simply no direct route for students to get to an engineering school or college at the university level,” says Robert Wicklein, professor and graduate coordinator of the Occupational Studies Program in the education college and member of the UGA Faculty of Engineering. “It’s always a circuitous journey--when it’s made at all--by the qualified students. The NSF recognizes the need to remove some of the happenstance from this situation.”
Wicklein directed the grant application and will serve as its principal investigator. Sidney Thompson, professor in the biological and agricultural engineering department, will serve as co-principal investigator on the project along with department colleagues Timothy Foutz, Ron McClendon and William Kisaalita. Roger Hill, Thomas Koballa and Bradley Findell from the College of Education will serve as project staff.

Regents approve new tuition rates
The board of regents for the University System of Georgia approved tuition increases this past month for the state’s 34 public institutions of higher education. The increases become effective this fall. At the USG’s four research universities--one of which is the University of Georgia--tuition will increase by $209 per semester (or $418 per year) over the previous year, from $1,395 to $1,604.
The tuition increases are aimed at maintaining the state colleges and universities as affordable access points for all Georgians to gain a high-quality post-secondary education via the 34-campus University System of Georgia. The increases also position the research universities within a pricing structure that better reflects that of their regional and national peers. The regents also will continue implementation of differential tuition policies, which allow for out-of-state tuition to be charged at four times in-state tuition and graduate tuition to be charged at a rate 20 percent higher than undergraduate tuition.

Education college receives commendation
The university’s College of Education has been recognized by the Georgia School Boards Association for its work in the Partnership for Community Learning Centers initiative with two Clarke County elementary schools.
The Clarke County Board of Education presented a GSBA Partnership Commendation in recognition of the college’s support of public education in the community and its dedication to Georgia’s youth.
The two-year-old partnership, the brainchild of Dean Louis Castenell and Clarke County School Superintendent Lewis Holloway, is transforming the two pilot schools--Chase Street and Gaines--into community learning centers that operate on an extended 195-day, year-round academic schedule to better meet student needs.
The UGA-Clarke schools initiative has resulted in a series of innovative programs, including:
• A UGA department of language education class, part of both the undergraduate and graduate curriculum toward ESOL endorsement, meets at the largely Hispanic Garnett Ridge community in Athens where UGA students teach English to Clarke school students and their families.
• Gwynn Powell, assistant professor of recreation and leisure studies, and her UGA graduate students are leading an array of after-school and inter-session break programs for students in the two elementary schools, which include a line dance program, the teaching of life skills for coping with challenges and computer-based programs designed to teach social and critical thinking skills.

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