Event ID: 1638074
Event Started: 10/24/2010 8:19:43 AM ET
Please stand by for real-time captions.
Good morning. Perfect. Now at least we know that the microphone is working. Good morning. My name is Mike Kennedy. I am in Albert Einstein fellow with United States Department of Energy. I have had a chance to talk with many of you over this exciting and informative weekend. Probably the question I've received the most is, what is an Albert Einstein hello? It's got a great name. It definitely has a great name, but not everyone knows what it is. This is a program where they take teachers, specifically in the stem fields, and we take a sabbatical and head off to Washington. In my case, I moved my family and myself out to Washington and I am advising the United States Department of Energy on their programs. For those teachers in the audience, you may want to consider this program if you are passionate about what you are doing and in the STEM field and in the education you want to help direct where that conversation is going, please apply for this program. In the past two months that I have been here, I have already learned more than I would have ever imagined. Really getting to see how the government works, getting to see how the process works, and doesn't always work in some places. Maybe we can help guide that. It has been a real eye opening experience for me. Hopefully, I can help direct some of the conversations in the right direction. If you have any questions, please feel free to ask me. Some teachers actually came up and asked for some advice and hints on things, but there is not only myself but actually three other Einstein Fellows in the room. There is right back they are Lindsay n-november, the fellow for NOAA. Right next to her is Laura Lucas who is at the office of [ indiscernible ] programs. In a former Einstein fellow at the same fellow -- at the same table is just jokes. I hope I haven't missed anyone in terms of the Einstein representation here. Please come if you have any questions, don't hesitate to ask one of us about the program and even the application process, which is open now. It is open now. Open October 1st. Don't do what I did and wait until the up -- wait until the last minute.
The first thing we are going to do right after I am done speaking is we will be moving onto a panel on STEM transfer. We are going to hear from the scientists and their ideas for bringing STEM education and the things that were worked on in the research into the classroom. After that, we will have a roundtable discussion about the STEM transfer. After a little break, we will move on to the all important next steps summarizing the conference and future funding opportunities. I no we put high emphasis there. Right after that, Jennifer will be around to answer questions during the conference summary about any of the travel arrangements that you may have. As we move on to our next panel discussion, the moderator for discussion is Andrew David. Andrew has been a revert -- in Panama, city -- Panama City, Florida. He holds a yes from Stetson University, MS from the University of South Dakota, and is completing a PhD from Florida State University. His research the -- he is also the diving officer for NOAA fisheries. Please help me in welcoming Andrew David.
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Array. Thank you. I guess in some venues STEM transfer would be talking about medical procedures, but this morning it is science technology engineering and mathematics. I think we have a nice diverse panel of researchers from our variety of fields this morning. I think we will just get started right away. Our first speaker will be Stephanie, an associate professor in the Department of mathematics and statistical sciences at the University of Colorado Denver. Her research interests are in the areas of statistical genetics, specifically in the development of statistical methods and study design for funding genetic causes of human diseases through the use of pedigree and population-based data. She has a track record of conducting research in a collaborative setting among federal, state, private, and corporate institutions. She has been involved in the management and inspection of graduate programs for the last 10 years. Currently, she is a graduate director for the Department of mathematics and statistical sciences at the University of Colorado Denver. She serves on the national human genome research Institute mentor for local high school teachers and students. Here she is.
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I think rather than having everyone come up individually, the other three speakers are Doctor Tim Green, Doctor Tim Bolton, and Doctor Kelly. We will do their bios as -- riddle for their talks. If everyone would come up, we can proceed.
I am glad I am going to have a few extra people appear to help me out. I would like to start by thinking the organizer is in my department chair for inviting me to talk. I was kind of a last-minute invite, but I really have been enjoying the conference. Certainly, it is different from the science conferences I tend to go to, so it's somewhat refreshing. I am going to try to give you some of my thoughts on STEM transfer, but I will give you a little bit about my background first so you can kind of take that in context of where I am coming from. I did a research experience for teachers this past summer. It was my first experience with teachers about pretty much at all. I was asked to do it. I wasn't quite sure what to expect, but I thought it would be fun, it be a nice outreach to the community. I figured I might as well give it a try. My research, as was introduced, is in statistical genetics and specifically looking at genes for disease. It was focused on that area specifically and just in terms of some of the help that I have, I had a graduate student that I helped, Jeffrey Larsen. Kathy Brown, chanting to -- Shannon Garvin, Amy Peddie, and Scott Wright who some of you may have spoke with. He was at our poster.
So I come from the field of math and statistics. I don't exactly reside there quite well, and I also kind of straddle over into biology, and then I had to use computer science as well. Obviously, very multidisciplinary. The thought of how to take a project where you need to understand the biology, you can't just understand the man, can't just understand the computer science, you really need to understand the system and then pull in while understanding the biology's of what that looks like in terms of mathematical terms, what kind of data you get out of that, knowing what your goals are, what kind of statistics, what kind of mathematics makes sense for that? And then actually being able to do that in terms of programming. There are a lot of pieces that are necessary. That said, I have been all research focus. When I was asked to talk about STEM transfer, I really wasn't sure what to talk about. I googled it, which wasn't a whole lot of help, I would say. I ended up at Webster. Of course, we all know what STEM is. Just to kind of put some context to it, transfer. The first definition is what I would normally think of. To convey from one person, place, or situation to another. It really didn't help me a whole lot thinking about what would be a transfer to my research, what would be transferred to teacher participants and the students? But I really like this last one. Kerry sounded with me. To make over the possession or control of. That is where I am trying to come from. My first experience with teachers and thinking about how I take my research, which is very multidisciplinary, and give that over to them to where they can take ownership of it. They can provide that to their students and their students can take ownership. That is kind of where I started thinking.
So, what I thought I would do is talk about what I saw as transfer to my own research, thoughts I had there. The panel yesterday with the teacher participants was great. I really enjoyed that. I will try to stay just a few more things, almost more thinking of what I would have seen the transfer as as a student going through the system. And then some challenges and just issues that I am kind of struggling with. Transfer -- this is where I ran out of room for this. Mathematician, statistician, and computer sciences. I abbreviated this. One of the first things that I really got to appreciate was the public view of my work. I guess it has been 13 years thinking about genetics problems. Certainly, after that long, you take a lot for granted. You understand the system. There is a lot of hype that goes on around the genome, the human genome product, what genetics, what personalized medicine is. I ignore the news often when I see those things. It was interesting just to get the four members very educated in the public and their perspective on what they really think of when they think of genetics and genomics. It was one of the first days within the first hour that I got a much better appreciation for that. And a couple of them would bring in newspaper articles, and we talked about family history. That was very enjoyable. So, thinking about how to take those concepts and really break them down to what would be necessary for research. Certainly, that challenged me in terms of my communication skills. The way that I decided to do the RET, the first few days I gave a morning lecture on genetics and in the next day was a morning lecture on statistics and then one on computer programming. After that, it was coming here is the goal, here's some data. Cozy wood you can figure out. I was really trying to make it their experience. We would have a meeting every day to talk about what they've done, what the progress was, what their struggles were, and it was quite informative being a scientist who got no training. It was nice to see the four of them work together and piecing things apart and teaching each other. I found that to be very rewarding. And then in terms of the actual problem, I already know what has been done or what has been tried. I already know what is acceptable and what is not acceptable. One of the really nice things was I had four people that had an unbiased opinion that could come in, look at it, and come up with some approaches to how to answer the question, which was very valuable.
In terms of transferred to the teacher and a student, I was one of the students that was always good at math. I had no idea what I was supposed to do with it. I did have that one coach that seem to think I was pretty good at math that would pull me out of class to teach me more advanced math and got me into programming. He seemed to think it was important. I was good at it, so I kept doing it. I remember asking all along the way, what do I do with it? What am I supposed to do with math? To me it wasn't obvious. To my teachers it wasn't obvious. I asked through my undergraduate career, and the answers I got was, you can work for industry. Doing what? At that point, you are really struggling with, well, I am good at something, but how am I supposed to contribute in some way with this? This is a very nice project in that it does involve math, it does involve statistics, and you can see what you actually need to do with the math and statistics. It took me four years to narrow down from math to statistics in another -- and another two years to get to genetics. If I had had this as a high school student, it certainly would have sped things up, perhaps. Besides that, it gives an appreciation for multiply this Harry work. You can look at lessons -- multidisciplinary work. You can look at mathematics and genetics at the same time. They both happen to be very critical in the content area. And then just connecting to students and teachers with local resources. It is amazing what high school students can do these days and what resources they have. Providing those connections I think it's very important. In terms of where we got to in our particular research experience. The participants put together a paper talking about their journey. It was wonderful the first time I read it I was just astounded.
For detailing where they started out in terms of their understanding of genetics, what they really thought they could do, and then understanding the process of going through research and going through the struggle and coming to the end. At the end of the project, they had gone through and done an analysis that they developed and were able to replicate what other scientists were showing. I am not sure quite what to do that yet. I am new to scholarship and teaching, but I really enjoyed that. We had one teacher participant that is working with one of the biology teachers at her school. She's putting together than a lesson that combined statistics and genetics. Again, I think as a student, if I had seen that, it really would have been eye-opening for the fact that, that's why math is important. I see that. Scott actually pointed to the fact that having gone through the progress -- the process of being introduced to the problem and then really having to struggle and research to get to the answer made him we think sometimes how he does his lessons. Instead of saying, here is the long math lecture, let's instead give them a problem and let them get to the answer themselves. In an something I didn't quite expect, I actually thought it was going to be a nuisance for them, was I had to teach them how to use the statistical programming language. They got a huge kick out of that. I was concerned it was going to be more of pain, but it is a free software package. It is a little clunky maybe when you get started, but you can do a lot of really powerful statistics with it. The number of them have talked about taking that back to their classroom, even analyzing their test scores and the data coming from -- you guys know better than I when I am talking about that.
Challenges. I really don't know how to take an area where you need knowledge across so many areas and come up with what would be considered a real research experience in just five weeks. How do you do that? How do you do that and make it meaningful for both the researcher that will keep doing it as well as a participant. Maybe during the discussions if someone comes up with an answer, I would love to know. At the end, how you come up with something that is tangible? These are things that I am struggling with and not really quite sure what the answers are. And if you guys get the answers to that, how do you get that across to the mathematicians and to the scientists? I think that is also going to be part of the struggle. I will stop there.
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That was very nice. All right. Our second panelist this morning is Doctor Tim Green. He is the cultural and natural resources manager for the Brookhaven national laboratory. He has a PhD in zoology and is a certified wildlife biologist. Beginning almost immediately upon his arrival at Brookhaven in 1999, he's worked with the office of education programs and has sponsored over a hundred interns, teachers, and faculty members. He is a firm believer in supporting science education through internships, and he has received two outstanding mentorship awards from the Department of Energy and has been recognized as a national role model of mentor for Mark -- more -- for minority access.
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Thank you. Thank you for inviting me up onto this panel. One thing I wanted to start out with was I am not a research scientist. As the cultural and natural resource manager for the laboratory, I have responsibilities for managing the 5265 acres of the laboratory. I don't actually do any research. It is a very important part of my program to help teachers and students get out and learning environment. Let's see if we can get through this right. Okay. A little bit about the laboratory. I am going to talk more about the laboratory and the programs than going into all the research that I've done in the past going for my PhD and everything. Down here? Okay. Long Island. We are out here in Long Island. The laboratory is halfway between New York City and Montauk, which they call the end if you have ever been out there. It is 5265 acres. It is right in the center of what is known as the Long Island Central Pine barons. It is a 100,000-acre preserve the area that was put there to protect the groundwater for the people of Long Island, because that is where we get all of our drinking water. We have this huge area that we've got to learn about and protect. For me at that 5265 acres with two people, myself and one other person to manage it. Little or no budget, about a budget of $20,000 a year to do any work. You can imagine if you got the responsibility on this large property, you have to understand it. How do you do that? When I got there, I took the lead in 1999. I was brought in with the intention to become the natural resource manager. My predecessor in the office of education programs, they did one intern per year. I thought, that's what you do it. When I go there I will have one intern per year, will do whatever we can. We started doing that and low and behold the next year we get a new manager of office of education programs. He starts building the program. He goes, can you take two? Sure, I can take two. Two is easy. Over the years, it started building. We got a third office of education program manager who just blew the education program skyhigh. Between about 2004 and now, we are well over 200 interns in the program. The constantly say, can you take one more, can you take one more?
Over the years as I have on my here and there, we have had as many as 26 interns in a year doing this program. It is kind of depending on whether I have a grad student or to present. The grad student can take four, the one can take for. And then in 2004, the teacher program started. The precursor had three teachers. The first year they assigned and asked me to take those on. I took those on and we started working. I've had 13 teachers since 2004. They run a three-year program. We have done literally everything. The focus for the teachers in my program is, what can we get you to do that you can go and bring it right to your classroom? The natural world around you, let's investigate the natural world. Get kids to realize what is around them, because a lot of kids in the urban environments, they've never stepped out into the woods. They don't understand it. They don't know where the food comes from. The idea is if we can get the teachers to get out of the classroom and bring their students with them, they can do research. We have done projects from [ indiscernible ]. We taught them how to do what her chemistry. The first teachers that we had taught chemistry. And they said, how do I get to chemistry in the outdoors? You can do what her quality testing, you can do testing for contaminants. They bring chemistry into the program.
Are still having a little bit of difficulty getting statistics involved in it, but we've have visit teachers say, Kelly, with you? -- can we get out with you? We have local Boy Scout camps having problems with their leg. One of the issues is the dam is 80 years old and needs to be repaired. In the New York state law, you have to know how much volume is in the lake, how high is the dam, so that you can decide whether you fall under the rules. It would make it cost half a million dollars or $50,000. We had teachers that actually learned this in the tree the. Drop the weight down to find out how deep it is. They had to figure out how to do that. They had to figure out, how do you get a good set of cross sections -- cross-sections for the lake. They came up with a methodology that was accurate. They literally put ropes across the lake. This was during the middle of summer camp with Boy Scouts out there and boats and swimming and everything. They came up with a profile of the lake. This has gone on to be presented at the conference in San Diego one teacher that is here with me, Maria Brown, has set up a molecular laboratory in her school. She is working with dragonflies all around the world. She got some specimens from Italy and is doing 20 programs. We've got a lot of activities going on. The result of that, the first few teachers that were in the pro- gram, because of the outdoor activities that we taught them, they worked with Mel Morris at the office of education program. They establish what they call the Green Institute. When Mel came up and said, we are going to call it the Green Institute, I am going, wait a minute. I am green. He was kind enough to use my last name. It is gaining research experience in the environment. [ laughter ]
The big problem for a lot of agencies is they don't know what they have. They don't know the water quality. They can keep track of it. You've got thousands of students. You can write into the curriculum for science learning. Go out, gather the data, and present it to the schools, present it to the agencies so that they have just a little bit more knowledge to do sound management. Some of it has gone so far as Miller Place middle school, they have adopted a beach area. Now they work with the county, the state, the town to go out and do this. They bring the agencies to help them. As part of OSSP, the teachers set up summer workshops. There has been over 100 teachers trained in the last four or five years, about 20 per year, and they come in and learn the protocols for doing that. I have already mentioned the molecular ecology. We had just come in through teacher programs, not so much mind but we are starting to link the teachers to the big science machines. They are taking sediment samples and bringing them into the light source to image what kind of contaminants there are. They are even doing it with soft tissues. Taking oysters and looking at accumulation of lead in oysters. I've already mentioned the Boy Scouts. We are working with a lot of the natural resource organizations.
Here is Maria. Some of it has gone international. Maria Brown, we've established the program between Long Island and Italy. What we have now done is we have now sent to teachers to Italy so that they can work to establish contacts with the schools in Italy. We begin to transfer information of the similarities and differences in the natural environment between the two countries. If you take the globe and look at the latitude, Long Island is roughly the same latitude as Pisa, Italy. We have very similar environments, very similar climates, and we are able to start sharing information. We do an annual event where the students in Italy, via the Internet, link to students here in the United States. They discussed their findings. A lot of it is fostering relationships. -- between the researchers, between the teachers and students, between the teachers and the agencies. It is providing guidance. I don't provide a whole lot of hands on. This is exactly how you do the science. We sit down in the summertime and we say, what are you interested in? Sometimes they start out with, what are you interested in, Tim? We will do whatever you want us to do. We have a short discussion to find out what our common interests are, and then we set up a program and get them the basic information they need, and then they design their research. If they have questions, they can come to me anytime. I will give them guidance. At the end, they have research that can be done. We will begin to start publishing some of the research, especially on Tiger [ indiscernible ]. The teachers that have worked on tighter -- tiger beetles have done things that no one else has thought of. Those are those little green bugs that jump out in front of you on the beach and fly about 20 feet. They live in burrows. No one has ever thought to figure out, well, what is the grain size that the need for the burrows? A teacher said, well, I wonder. They have that inquiry as to what it is, which is what a good scientist does.
A challenge for us. A lot of times it's equipment. A lot of the work has to be done with very cheap equipment because I don't have the budget. Other challenges are in communications. It is pretty much a summer program. Teachers go back to school, they get really busy, I get really busy, and so sometimes we are able -- we aren't able to communicate during the year. And in planning for the next summer. It is usually when they arrive, that's when I start planning. It's just one of those things that I've got a regular job. It's not a research program. Successes. Teachers have gone on to [ indiscernible ]. Some of them have become department heads. They have obtained grants. They've gone out and got there via the tapestry grants that they've gone to get. They have established molecular ecology labs at their schools, increase the number of students in science that want to attend, started AP environmental courses at the school where they have been working. Again, they've developed workshops, created the open space stewardship program. They are now encouraging their seniors -- they are saying, when you get to college, don't forget that the NL has internships. Last summer I had the first undergraduate internship that came from a teacher that was within the program. So we are pushing those students into science and technology programs. I think the biggest thing is getting teachers excited gets the students excited. Science is fun. Thank you.
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All right. Thank you, Tim. Our next Tim is Doctor Tim Bolden. He is a director of physics. His group has support from the Department of Energy and the National Science Foundation that performs research in elementary particle research and is involved in experiments at the energy frontier and has experiments that studies the properties of neutrinos. He collaborates with high school students and teachers through the DOE funded court program and a K-12 grant.
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Okay. Thanks to everyone and the organizers for bringing us all together. I always like conferences where I don't know everything before the conference, and this is one of them. One of them divide many of them are almost all the other flavor. I am going to discuss STEM transfer at our center. I will not talk about the project as a whole except to mention a few words. It is really a nationwide program. There are 53 centers at the universities and national laboratories across the country in 24 states and in Puerto Rico. The aim is to bring the contemporary high-energy physics or elementary particles to physics, the kind of things that we are setting in Switzerland, for example, to the high school, to the high school teacher, and even two middle schools as well. The gist of the program is that we partner university mentors and national Lab scientists with high school teachers, by and large. What is the topic that we are interested in? It is particle physics. I will just throw some words at you. We study things like Quartz and New-Line, neutrinos, all of this very esoteric sounding stuff. One of the challenges is to get across the relevance of what we study. It is perhaps more relevant than you might think. If you hold out your hand, for example, and wait for a minute, you are not going to feel this, so don't get too excited, but if you wait for a minute, an electrically charged object called a muon, which is about 200 times heavier than an electron, is going to go through your hand. It is the primary constituent of something called cosmic rays. It is mostly protons coming from the outer space. These guys are kind of coming to our bodies at all times. They provide, depending on where you live, about a quarter of the radioactive dose that we all receive every year whether we want to or not. It's just the radiation from these cosmic rays New-Line this. Our friends often use carbon 14 dating for all sorts of different studies. There would not be any carbon-14 without this. The lifetime is too short. They would all do K. a way so they would have to be regenerated. These esoteric things pop up in everyday life more than we think. Let me get to the theme of transfers and just mention a few specifics, sortie -- sort of maybe a few more practical things. I will concentrate on what we do at our Center at Kansas State. We have about 10 high school teachers who are very active in our program and another 10 were sort of more casually active who occasionally participate in workshops and things like this. One of our major activities is in cooperation with [ indiscernible ] lab.
The project has developed cosmic ray detectors, portable devices, that can signal the presence of these cosmic rays as they reach the ground. They have made them very robust so that they are very safe, very easy to operate. These can be placed in high school classrooms. Altogether if you put all of the parts in one spot, it would probably be about the size of that projector. We have deployed in our Center three of these detectives -- three of these detectors in classrooms one of our high school teachers has them -- has one of them. This almost seems too easy, but what a great example of transfer. The piece of apparatus in a school. This can be used over and over and over again. It stays there. It is sustainable at some level. It is very tangible, it is sitting in the classroom. The kids see it, the principal see it, and so on. All right. What are the kinds of things you can do with this? First of all, you play with modern technology. You have a device that can time signals to within a few nanoseconds. Okay. A very high tech contemporary device. You can use it to measure how fast new ones are going. They travel nearly the speed of light. You can measure the very fast objects and measure the speed of light. One of the beauties of physics is if you take a physics class, we teach you everything in the first two semesters. There is nothing much new. We just do it over and over again and sort of added complexity. All of this stuff coming from the large collider and all of our fancy technologies really use the common ideas like momentum conservation that you see an ice real -- in a high school class. That can be made except with modern contemporary physics. Citizens -- students can measure only one decay at a time. There is never a lot of them. Remember, they are going through our body at all times. There is no particular danger.
May find the lifetime to be about 2.2 microseconds. That's about the value. If you multiply that by the speed of light, the fastest they can go, and we asked the students to do this, they found that the muon can only travel 660 meters. Then we tell you them but that is not how far they travel. They came down from about 15 commenters above the ground. There is a major contradiction. The resolution of that contradiction requires the special theory of relativity. You see, students can see evidence in front of their face for relatively poor Albert Einstein right in the high school classroom. It is a very exciting thing that really engages the students. Okay. What else do we transfer to the high school? Well, we certainly hope, and we think we are successful, at transferring expertise to the treat jurors. We give all participants rigorous training in methods of modern training. We typically hold workshops. Then they also have the opportunity to further that training in national laboratories. Even further than that, if we have the opportunity to apply for funds, it's in the teachers discerned to Switzerland. By the end of this training, using our cosmic ray detectors as examples, they teachers can operate the that hackers with confidence. They can explain how to operate, they can allow students to operate the devices and have measurements in the classroom. They can design other activities. Some of the things that Martin's classes looking at is they aim their cosmic ray detector at the sun. The cosmic rays come from the sun. Well, we know they don't, but this is inquiry. This is an experimental issue. They can decide for themselves. There are all sorts of other measurements that can be made.
Making a bit -- they could take the dissector outside to see if the rate goes up. They find out that that is, indeed, the toothpaste because because the roof peeled -- yields us a little bit. They can do all sorts of things in the classroom. Finally, teachers can partner with other teachers. That is how you really connect to this program. If you have one cosmic ray in the detector, then why not let all the science teachers use it? If you have three in a state, why not form consortiums and try to do joint sorts of projects. Kansas -- most people think that Kansas is flat, which is pretty much true, except it is a ramp. It starts fairly low on the east side but on the west side you are almost to Denver. Remember, Denver is the mile high. If you get on the Westside, you could almost roll all the way to Kansas City. Last night it is just a nice gentle ramp. Not quite, but on the average you can. If we deploy these detectors geographically in the state, we can look at the altitude of cosmic braids. That's exciting as well. Another item of transfer, this time by Stephanie mentioned this as well. Back to the researcher. What do we get out of this? We are pretty practical in physics. We pay attention to this sort of thing. We derive benefits at various levels. First of all, as mentioned, when these cosmic ray detectors in the classroom, they are an appreciation for elementary particle physics, sometimes what we arrogantly think as fundamental physics, that seep out into the general public. They understand our research. They understand that they are supporting our research. They get excited by it. If we don't have the public supporting our research in the US, we're dead. They pay all the bills. That's an important thing. Also in all fields of physics, we need very good students. We need that next generation of good students. Putting these sorts of devices in classes and training these teachers, especially, engages that top tier of students regardless of the background. We need that top tier of students. That is the one group we cannot lose. We are having evidence through an increase in physics majors that this is hoping increase the size of that top tier of students. We have to have that to stay competitive in the field. Finally, we have trained our high school teachers to do particle physics. We have collaborators. We can use our high school teachers as collaborators on current experiments. They know quite a bit.
There is always a contradiction that occurs to me when we talk about teachers as researchers. In universities, we are encouraged to incorporate undergraduates to our research. That's a good thing. We write papers with them and so on in so on. Somehow when the undergraduates get their degree in science and become teachers, it is like they reset at a different level and we are not supposed to collaborate with them anymore. This doesn't make any sense. It makes no sense at all. The teachers are really -- and I actually think we should think of them this way. They are professional scientists. Teachers, scientists, that distinction is pretty blurry. I teach in the University and the professional physicist throughout Kansas, I mean, they are scientists. That is an important thing as well because they are scientists and they are quite capable when they get that little bit of specialized training, we can bring them into our products -- projects. Martin has been brought into high energy physics experiments through something he is working on on contemporary projects that are going to run in the next few years. I think the transfer really works well in both directions. We can transfer techniques and ideas and so on down to the classroom. We also received the benefit of better students coming up, collaborators, in a broader support for the field as the areas around these high schools understand what their students are doing. And I will stop there.
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All right. Our fourth panelist this morning is Kelly. He received a bachelor of science and a Masters and PhD in aerospace engineering from Israel Institute of technology. Between 1986 and 2005, he worked as a program manager with an emphasis on unmanned aerial vehicles and intelligence control. Between 2005 in 2007, he was a research contractor focused on dimensional modeling, system identification, and control of unsteady way close. Since 2007, he has been an associate professor of aerospace engineering at the University of Cincinnati. He treats his graduate and undergraduate courses and introduction into [ indiscernible ], aircraft design, basic control system, and intelligence control. His research interests include intelligent systems, unmanned aerial vehicles, feedback flow control, fuzzy logic control, quality of multiagent management of master -- natural disasters, nonlinear system identification, and morphing aircraft. He is currently an associate director of [ indiscernible ] and an associate fellow. He has served as a faculty mentor for the last three years at the University of Cincinnati and as I've sponsored program. Hooray.
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Very, very good morning to you all. I am so happy to be here. I will start off with a summary of what I am going to talk about. I will try to explain how I got here. If I could have just one sentence in which I have to summarize my experience, my very biased experience, which I am very proud of of the speetwenty program, I would say that the RET offers a new diverse perspective that sustains enthusiasm. With that beginning, let me see how I got here. Here we are. Okay. The first thing is technology. That's what brought me to the program. [ indiscernible ] has been running the RET program here at the University of Cincinnati. And my first year and he pulled me into the program and I am not going away from it. The team that I have this year, but delightful Amy Jamison and Melissa -- Amy is with us. I'm very proud to be with her and present the poster the other day. Graduate students -- any good program depends on the team you have. In addition, in order to be able to come across and do something meaningful, I needed the support of an enthusiastic and very capable grad student. We are just one of 16. The goal of the program so that you can understand where we started off with and the whole project was to study the flight of the insects, understand inspiration in what we could do from that, and try to improve the design of micro [ indiscernible ]. The method in which we started off the program was, hey, we've got a couple facilities that generally speaking teachers don't have. [ indiscernible ] and see how we are at controlling a glider. The last part of it was a research product or a goal that came from the teachers. The first three weeks for understanding the tools and the physics. Then we went to look into literature, combat, and the topic bonds by flight. We have these tools and know-how to use them. Here you see in the tunnel, this is what looks at a dragonfly. It's taken from a paper that was published in 2008. No, I will talk about the benefits to the scientists. I have been an engineer for 22 years and an academic for three. I never learned how to teach. As I pondered over the lessons plans why don't we first talk about the principles and then translate something. Hey, let's do these and toss them into the air and then ask questions. Maybe I can do that in my classroom. I signed up for this course, which will help you create new courses. I am going to learn how to teach better. I found a big gap. I have been doing engineering for a while. I think I am quite good at it. This ability to learn something new is invigorating. It's new. You have to go and get training in order to do your job better. This is something you are all very familiar with, but it is new to me. I didn't know it was until this summer. We have a class which is a regular win, which courses are handed over from generation to generation we are into morphing. This is an integrated aircraft design. The idea was, hey, let us try to morph something in, put our own efforts. I would stop or students would use a software. That is a software that we designed that we take the arbitrary shape and tell you how good it is. The idea was for students to develop [ indiscernible ]. Now after seeing what teachers can do in a very short while, I am going to have them develop it and stick it into the tunnel and get results with it. I have come back with information of knowing what can be done in a certain amount of time and how to get students excited about their design by trying to not just get the simulation going for them but also having to develop, put that into the tunnel, get results, and validate that. I am going to restructure the class I teach, which is -- I found out that undergraduates can get a lot more from their programs by having an element of research involved in their class. This came up just this morning. You know, it is not just a six-week program. Once you've learned, hey, there could be something new happening here but that seems to the mind and then later on I start off -- why? If a cat has a dream, they are all about mice, right? I have worked for many years. Every time I have a dream, it is all about this. Yesterday we were talking with Stephanie and Amy and saying, what can we do with a very highly efficient dragonfly wing. Let me tell you what we found out in this program. We found out that this is here on the wide access. We have efficiency, leftover drag. Usually speaking the number goes down. Conventionally aerodynamics classes. Under 50,000 feet it no longer works. Now, the correlated foil off of this came up with some very effective results. On the one hand I am producing [ indiscernible ] and efficiency goes up. Goes up by 250%. How can we use this enhanced [ indiscernible ]. Golf is played with golf balls. Here you can see that dragonflies need their little golf ball type rings in order to make their act going. The idea was maybe we could come up with this collective network of micro ringed turbines and they will work in the same speeds. Isn't it a good idea if we can get it out of the wind if it is at five minutes per second?
If we happen to be in that area, why should we go through conventional airports customer I was looking at googling microbe turbines. They all try to downscale the local farming conventional dynamics. Why didn't he think about that and the possibilities? This could be a great idea. We talk about the fact that a couple months after the program is going, you have something in the brain. You get out of the comfort zone and you think about other things. This is an area that I'd like to follow up in the next couple months, maybe do a program with one of the schools. Another thing. All of the freshmen that come build this [ indiscernible ] we have been doing that for over 10 years. I thought that was a good place to get started. It is very interesting when you see a group of teachers working on the same program coming up with a very diverse perspective. We ask questions. They are a a good pain in the backside sometimes. We thought, what experience could be low cost and meaningful another step away from this is going to kites. Radio controlled kites. This is an area that I am currently working on with a group of academic research experience undergraduate [ indiscernible ] we are trying to find ways in which we can control [ indiscernible ] and do something nice with it. This is a whole new area. That is going to be a great way to start off and kickstart this ability to understand the forces acting on an object that sustains itself in the air. I use the word object. [ laughter ] Those scientists invite schools over four a summer camp. You want to be able to engage in activities. The facilities you see, we use them 10 days a year. The head of the part meant that up with the teachers and said, hey, we can do this. It doesn't cost a big addition. We can get students excited about it. These are the ideas. Maybe we can recruit future engineering students. Planning for productivity, you need a good team, equipment. In this case it was to the national Museum.
Very important. Teachers decide the specifics of the research program. The teachers know far more about developing plans for the students. They should lead and we support. You see the benefits. Discovery of new and unique results, independent analysis and discussion, and drawing of conclusions. This is a diverse and new perspective. It helps me be a better engineer. Thank you very much for this opportunity.
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All right. Well, I would like to have another around of applause for the panel and it's entirety. You've done a nice job.
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They are also very mindful of the time limit requests, so we have a good bit of time here for questions. Are we doing the microphone or are we doing -- all right. I would guess I will start with the question. I am in [ indiscernible ], so I have a nice captive audience that cannot get more than 187 feet away from you. We have them around the clock for 10 days, two weeks or so. We heard yesterday that common lodging was found to be very helpful for a successful program. Do you guys have any specific things that you found really help your programs?
Yes. One of the things I do with all of my students and teachers since it is a summer program, I actually host barbecues so that I can get all of the teachers, all of the students, and they can't interact with each other.
I think it is very important to build a team. We don't necessarily have the Cap and -- captive audience in The University setting, but we certainly work at once we can recruit teachers, it is important to try to keep them in. As new teachers come in, we form them into a team and try to keep doing activities together. We have workshops at the University, for example, but also getting funding to go on trips to national laboratories and things of that sort. This sense of longing is very important to the success of the program.
We have a question back here.
I have an easy question for at the first speaker. He mentioned the software that helps with statistics. I wondered what the name of that software was.
It is called [ indiscernible ] statistic software. If you are interested, I actually have a video tutorial that will walk you through installing and setting it up, so you can contact me on my email if you are interested.
I wanted to know because you make it sound like keeping the program going is almost a no-brainer. I know it takes more work than that. How do you track the effectiveness over time of your program? Do you keep in contact with fewer teachers? What is your method of keeping in touch. I no you're funding must depend on it.
That is probably the biggest challenge at least for me.
There is no good mechanism that I found. That is why yesterday I was raising questions at our discussion table about the social networks, you know, the Facebook. Is there a way to just set up a system where they can look at what is going on in my program and they can send questions and interact. It is not a hard-core way of keeping track, but at least you have some idea of what is going on. Most of the time now to fight how I know what is happening with students is I will get an email either requesting a letter of reference for getting into a grad student program or, do you know of another program that I can participate in? Or just asking the question. I can always go back and ask them a question, how are things going, what are you doing, what is new happening, and kind of keep track of what is happening. It is not a real definite low -- definite devaluation of the program.
We use a variety of methods. First of all, since they are NSF funded and that is sort of a hierarchy over us, there are annual reports and there is an evaluator for the entire program. I don't participate in the evaluation, but I contribute material that the value waiter can use. At a local level, the strongest indication of success for me is that our teachers keep coming back. We have never had one quick. They have kind of moved up and be on the program. This is actually a small program -- problem we have with motivated teachers. They get excited about the field, but not to the graduate school, get a degree, and they work for the university. That's good, but in a sense it is also taking the teachers out of the classroom. We are also fortunate enough to live in a small population where I don't know every physics teacher in the state, but I am probably only about 2 degrees a way of knowing every physics teacher in the state. We have a very active, healthy state school science organization called Kansas of CCH and four teachers science.
High, I am Suzie Terri. Thank you so much for this panel. This was really interesting and helpful. I have a question about -- somebody yesterday in one of the panels mentioned having a preliminary meeting for mentors as part of their program to kind of orient them to what the expectations were and to help them kick off their programs. All lot of you it sounded like working situations where you have a bunch of teachers in a group in your programs. It's kind of under the same roof. Certainly, in the national labs you have a history and culture of support for these programs. If you are going to do a meeting for mentors come in situations where the mentors would be operating individually in area diversities and not part of an ongoing program or national labs, what would be the top three things that you would tell them to help them sort of jump start their interaction with the teacher?
It is important for mentors to come and talk about their stories, why they are doing that, what has happened, what has been learned. Everybody has their own story. I think that over time some mentors try the program and they stick with the program. It is not because of someone and their attraction. It is because they get something from the program, which is beyond all of that, and it sustains their enthusiasm. That is very important. Talk about sustainability. It is dollars, that is fun, there is other things. It is enthusiasm that needs to be sustained. You get that group of mentors who continue the status with the teachers. You bring them up. I think that would make an impact to talk about the lessons. Generally speaking, if you think that teachers can come in and help you with your manpower issues, collect data, write reports, and then go away without having to have ownership on the research program, then you are not doing a good job. You are not conveying this ability to go over to the next level. You have to be able to isolate them from your regular research program. This is different. This is something in which you do not know for sure what you get back in return as far as research ideas. That is why there is this excitement about it. You are in uncharted territories. If this is part of your regular program, then it is different. You don't relate her -- Gridley to teachers as graduate students. They come from different backgrounds, all different ballgame. That's my point.
A very specific thing that is effective is that the idea of a lead teacher who doesn't have to lead a group but who is the sort of lead teacher for the organization as a whole. My piece of advice is if you write a proposal, proposed the concept of a lead teacher. Worked very hard at recruiting and retaining a lead teacher. The interface between the active community is very valuable. I don't take anyone does it better than the teacher.
That's a great question. I'd love to know the answer to it. [ laughter ] In terms of coming from someone who is done this once and who is still worried about things like promotion and furthering in the process and academics, questions that I have would be, how do you set this type of activity into a career plan when you have been brought up to think strictly about research, research papers, research conferences? As much as it is enjoyable and insightful, it is not clear how you would build that into be appreciated and appreciated by people in your administration. I would love to know that. I wasn't trained in education. I have no appreciation for what kind of dissemination makes sense for this. Not only what kind of form of dissemination but what really needs to go into that. I have no idea. That would be a helpful thing to start out with. And then just how to pare down and make sense of a problem. I still am struggling with that. I think for bringing in researchers and a university, those are three things that if you can answer, you will be keeping them involved for things that site enthusiasm in the field and passion. It will be because it is also a logic part of your career plan.
I had just one thing I'd like to add to Kelly's comments. Be open. Open and enthusiastic, because if you are going to the calm a mentor to the teachers, you have to have that openness. As Kelly pointed out, they are bringing in a new perspective. Teachers are scientists. They just want to be able to present science to their students. They are coming into it with a whole different viewpoint. Just be open.
All right. Any others? All right. Well, thanks again.
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Okay. Good morning. We are going to take a quick break like we did yesterday so that we can set up for our roundtable discussions. This is our last roundtable discussion we will have. I'm going to ask that everyone fill the tables as much as possible, because we do have facilitators for most of the tables this morning. If there is only a few people at your table, combined tables. I'd ask you to come back in 10 minutes.
[ 9:45 EST, Event has broken up into roundtable discussions at this time. ]