Monday, June 2, 2003

WRITER: Alan Flurry, 706/542-7825, aflurry@uga.edu
CONTACT: Robert Wicklein, 706/542-4503, wickone@uga.edu

UNIVERSITY OF GEORGIA TO CREATE BRIDGES FOR ENGINEERING EDUCATION

ATHENS, Ga. – Professors in the University of Georgia 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 grades K-12.

To facilitate the creation of these materials a Summer Engineering Education Institute is being held at UGA beginning today, June 2, through Friday, June 13. More than 40 high school students and university faculty will come together to participate in a variety of classroom and lab-based activities. Participants will be 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," said 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.

The project grew out of discussions at the April 2001 Faculty of Engineering Symposium to advance engineering at UGA. Participants identified the need to develop pathways for secondary school students to higher university engineering education and recognized that the university had a role to play in this development.

"This project will expand the pipeline of high school students choosing careers in engineering while simultaneously increasing the technical literacy of precollege educators. It begins a long-term partnership between engineering and education at UGA to address the technological literacy needs of Georgia’s citizens," said Faculty of Engineering Director Dale Threadgill, who initiated discussions with education dean Louis Castenell, which precipitated the interdepartmental collaboration necessary for this grant.

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 education college will serve as project staff.

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