This award provides support for Symposium PP: Materials Education and a special tribute session to Marni Goldman at the Fall Materials Research Society (MRS) Meeting, Nov. 30 ? Dec. 4, 2009. Materials Research Society will use NSF support to defray travel expenses of participants who might not ordinarily attend such a meeting, such as students and education and outreach staff.
The MRS education symposium will address three major topics: Crosscutting Issues, which will include panel sessions on evaluation and assessment, inquiry based learning, and grant development; Curriculum Development and Pedagogy - Public outreach, K-12, undergraduate, and graduate levels; and, the Marni Goldman Memorial Session which will focus on persons with disabilities.
Intellectual Merit The Materials Education symposium is expected to advance knowledge and understanding on cross-cutting issues critical to all levels of materials education. This symposium will benefit from concomitant events around the MRS: the annual meeting of MRSEC and NSEC Education Coordinators, Nanoscale Informal Science Education Network (NISE Net), and MRS Public Outreach Committee events.
Broader Impacts A primary objective of the meeting is to increase capacity of the materials research community to broaden the impact of their research. This symposium will focus on broadening participation of underrepresented groups, in particular those with disabilities.
