This award provides funding for a three year continuing award to support a Research Experiences for Teachers (RET) in Engineering Site program at Stanford University, entitled, "Stanford Engineering Research Experience for Teachers (SERET)", under the direction of Dr. Sheri D. Sheppard.
The SERET program, an integrated center of excellence at Stanford University, will focus on the multi-disciplinary nature of engineering by placing a total of 25 STEM teachers in grades 6-14 in one of nine engineering departments and 49 independent labs, centers and institutes on campus for an 8 week summer hands-on research experience. This summer program will be followed up by development of engineering-based lessons to help students bridge to real-world experiences by showing how concrete and applicable engineering concepts connect what is learned in school to what goes on in the outside world.
(SERET) Program was created to expose San Francisco Bay Area secondary science teachers, and indirectly their students, to engineering disciplines and the ways basic engineering concepts relate to science and math curricula. SERET’s goal of increasing the interest and proficiency in science and engineering among middle and high school students was accomplished by providing their teachers with an authentic and enriching in-depth 8-week research experience in a Stanford laboratory. Over the course of four summers (2010-2013), 23 teachers held research fellowships in Stanford's engineering labs that were funded by SERET; 14 of them participated two consecutive summers, often supported by non-NSF external funds in the second summer. The heart of SERET lay in the engineering laboratory experience, in which teachers worked under the guidance of a graduate student or post-doctoral fellow as a full member of the lab’s research team. Teachers also participated in weekly faculty lectures, lab tours, pedagogical discussions, and hands-on workshops to introduce them to new laboratory exercises for classroom use. Each teacher created a unique "Education Transfer Plan," i.e., new curriculum and materials to transfer difficult concepts and innovative methodologies to their students. These peer-reviewed and standards-aligned lessons are shared with teachers everywhere via a website created by SERET’s nonprofit partner Industry Initiatives for Science & Math Education (http://community.iisme.org/). There are currently over 600 lessons (including lessons developed by every SERET teacher) available on this website and they have been downloaded by over 4,000 unique visitors. Teachers also had several opportunities to re-connect during the school year, by returning to Stanford for conferences and workshops and bringing their students to Stanford campus. SERET teachers have reached more than 10,000 students since the program began in 2010; we estimate thousands more have benefited from the lessons developed as part of the program. We now have evidence from the SERET evaluation that SERET teachers and/or teachers in RET-like programs believe that engaging students in authentic, personally relevant STEM experiences influences those students to study STEM after high school. We have confirmation that students’ decisions to study STEM in college can be directly influenced by classroom experiences that provide them with relevant, authentic experiences in STEM disciplines. The evaluation also showed that teachers’ experiences in SERET and RET more broadly: 1) engendered and/or reinforced in their minds the critical importance of hands-on learning and authentic experiences with STEM-related concepts and practices, and 2) gave them the experiences, knowledge, skills, resources, and professional dispositions needed to convey such experiences to their K-12 students.
