NEWS INDEX Archives 2004 September

Illinois part of new center bringing engineering into high schools

Craig Chamberlain, News Editor
217-333-2894; cdchambe@uiuc.edu

9/13/04

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — High school students in technology education courses will start thinking more like engineers if a new $10 million National Science Foundation grant, involving the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, has the desired effect.

The U. of I., through its College of Education, will receive about $1 million of a five-year grant, starting this fall, to establish a National Center for Engineering and Technology Education (NCETE), based at Utah State University. Also part of the grant are seven other universities, including Illinois State University; 15 school districts, including six in Illinois; and three societies dealing with education and engineering.

The impetus for the center grew out of the fact that many high school vocational education programs have evolved into technology education in recent decades, but the programs are not doing what they could to introduce knowledge and skills associated with engineering, said Scott Johnson, the head of the department of human resource education at Illinois.

“There are a lot of these kids who could do the engineering and don’t realize it,” Johnson said, especially since many are not in a pre-college program. “The problem is that the teachers don’t have the background they need to teach this in a better way.”

Also part of the picture is the high demand for teachers in all areas of science and math, and a downward national trend in the number of students pursuing engineering and science careers, he said.

Johnson is the research director for NCETE and site administrator of the center’s program at Illinois.

According to the grant proposal, the center will link technology educators with engineering educators “in a partnership that will build capacity and diversity in engineering and technology education at all levels.”

The aim is to bring engineering content – along with design, problem-solving, and analytical skills – into high schools and their technology education programs.

The U. of I. is one of four land-grant university research partners involved in NCETE, along with Utah State, the University of Minnesota and the University of Georgia. The goal at these institutions will be “to prepare a different kind of faculty member, to work in a different kind of teacher education program, to teach a different kind of curriculum,” Johnson said.

Their aim is to produce 20 Ph.D. graduates, five at each institution, who will seek faculty positions in teacher training programs. The ultimate goal is “to infuse engineering into the high school curriculum by preparing better teachers,” Johnson said.

The graduate students trained under the program will be connected with engineering faculty on their respective campuses. They also will be tied together online, across campuses, taking specially designed courses as a group of 20 and sharing ideas.

The research partners are matched with universities in their regions that excel in their technology teacher education programs. For the U. of I., that partner is Illinois State University. The other four schools are Brigham Young University; California State University, Los Angeles; North Carolina A&T State University; and the University of Wisconsin-Stout.

In addition to the Ph.D. graduates, NCETE hopes to produce more than 150 technology education teachers, Johnson said. The center and its partner schools also will conduct research on how students learn engineering and technological concepts, and on how best to prepare technology teachers, and will design and deliver professional development programs for practicing teachers.

The school districts involved are spread throughout the four regions, all within reach of the university campuses. The districts working with the U. of I. and Illinois State are Neuqua Valley High School, Naperville; Normal Community High School and University High School, Normal; Glenbrook High School, Northbrook; O’Fallon High School, O’Fallon; and Willowbrook High School, Villa Park.

NCETE also will work with the International Technology Education Association, the Council on Technology Teacher Education, and the American Society of Engineering Education.

As a high school industrial arts teacher at the start of his teaching career, Johnson said he and others in the field have hoped for years to establish a center like NCETE. In submitting the proposal to the National Science Foundation, however, they considered it a long shot. “It’s an area they have not funded before,” he said. “This was a big deal for us to get this. We believe this center will have a national impact.”