Graduate students are at the front-end of cutting-edge research and provide the best opportunity to encourage young people to pursue an education in the STEM fields, to innovate transformative technologies, and to and become productive engineers, scientists and educators. This proposal will train a new cadre of graduate students to apply their particular engineering skills to enhance the math and science education of high school students through the context of the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) Grand Challenges while concurrently illustrating the global nature of these societal issues. Through this process, the graduate Fellows will themselves better understand and develop the linkages between their research and these very significant global societal challenges. The strategy for accomplishing this is the development of a unique presentation model that uses the NAE Grand Challenges as examples and as a vehicle through which to integrate and enrich the teaching of science and mathematics in the School District of Philadelphia while embedding feedback and interactive processes by which the Fellows, Teachers, and students communicate shared experiences. The high school students and Teachers will gain an appreciation for the science and mathematics concepts in an applied, real world context linked to global technical/scientific issues. Concurrently, the Fellows will become knowledgeable in pedagogy through direct application of their technical/scientific expertise in the context of the classroom setting, interaction with the Teacher, and mentoring students. Thus the graduate Fellow, Teacher, and the students will all ?learn-by-doing?.
