HSTFP Alumni - need your help

Hi Everyone,
I hope your school semesters are winding down and you are looking forward to the summer.

We are currently in our 3rd year of the HSTFP program and looking forward to a new group of teachers to interact with.

In the meantime we are putting together a report of our efforts and would like to learn from you how you have used your experience from the HSTFP program in your classroom. Please include how many students you have interacted with on this topic and any demographics you are willing to share.

We are looking forward to hearing from you and please keep us up to date on what you may need from us to help you in the classroom.

Thanks
Andi Gobin

Still haven't gotten a chance to use the data, but very soon

Our end of course exams are looking to be very difficult. I'm very glad that I have the pictures and the data from the spray drying. Our test focuses on real world applications. The students have to be able to explain much more than they have in the past. With my plans, it should be a pretty good unit for the students.

Also, because of the program, I have been able to talk with 2 specific students. One is planning on changing from Mechanical to BioEngineering. After I told him what sort of research I was working on this summer, he was very interested in the program. Another student was already going to start as a bioengineering major, but me talking about the program will probably keep him in the major and motivated. He, like the other students, was very interested in my research. Hopefully, they will both meet up with a couple of the professors and get involved in a lab.

Mark

DiscoverE Educator Awards

Apply today for the The DiscoverE Educator Awards! 
The DiscoverE Educator Awards are shining a spotlight on the educators who are inspiring tomorrow’s innovation generation. Winners will be recognized at event in Washington DC (all expenses paid), receive $2,000, and a 3M digital projector. Unique to this program, engineers and engineering students are part of the nomination process. The application is available at http://www.eweek.org/NewsStory.aspx?ContentID=256 and the deadline is December 1. 


Send completed applications to info@eweek.org.


Please share this program with teachers (Grades 6-12) who are inspiring our students to discover engineering AND engineers/engineering students who might be interested in nominating. 

An Update from Mark

Dr Gobin,

I hope the semester is going well for you. I know most of your lab undergrads are off on co-ops, so I'm sure that adds to the stress. Just wanted you to know Jake and I presented our posters to the math and science department teachers at male and a couple cool things came out of it. First a lot of our teachers were excited about applying to the program. And we are talking our national award winning teachers. They were really excited especially our science teachers who could really benefit from the experience. Secondly, we are probably going to set up some sort of tour, that will probably include the clean room. But that is yet to be determined. Other than that my kids have been asking lots of questions about my poster. It really has the curiosity up. So hopefully we will get some good results out of it. I just wanted you to know that it has definitely been worth it so far. If you need I can post this stuff on the blog too. Thanks again for everything.

Mark H

Weekly Meeting - Meet the Freshman Faculty

This week's meeting will be focused on discuss with faculty from the sciences and math, to learn what are their expectations of freshman and how to help prepare them.

Invited attendees are:
Patricia Ralston - Engineering Fundamental
Christine Rich - Chemistry
Thomas Riedel - Math
William Huston - Physics

See you at 10am Thursday July 7

Spray Drying

It has been very interesting to see a couple different ways that technology can break things apart into nano sized particles. I have been using a spray dryer to make nano-sized particles. So far we have been getting sizes in the 200nm-500nm range, which is pretty exciting. It has been interesting because we are working with different mixtures and trying to determine which of our variables minimizes the particle size while at the same time creating a uniformly spherical particle. At the moment we are going through a Taguchi model, which allows us to test the different variables, without changing one at a time.

I am planning on using this program in my classroom called imagej. You can kind of see the tool bar that allows you to measure different things about your particles. Hopefully, you all can use this tool too. I am going to use it to get some measurements so that my students can collect their own data instead of me giving it to them. Also, I wanted to use this image, because the particle in the middle is clearly huge compared to the others. This in theory came through a spray head that is only 4 microns in size, which cannot be true. I want to talk with the students about what happened to make that particle and see what the students can come up with.

This has been a great experience so far. Hopefully everyone else is enjoying it too.

Link to 2010 HSTFP Blog

Wanna see what the teachers posted last year!
Check out there comments here : http://kynanonet.org/2010-fellows/