{"id":4966,"date":"2016-04-27T11:22:02","date_gmt":"2016-04-27T15:22:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/federal\/?p=4966"},"modified":"2016-05-03T11:43:21","modified_gmt":"2016-05-03T15:43:21","slug":"sharing-the-fields-allure","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/federal\/2016\/04\/27\/sharing-the-fields-allure\/","title":{"rendered":"Sharing the Field\u2019s Allure"},"content":{"rendered":"

ENG brings engineering to schools to bring students to engineering<\/h2>\n
\"ENG<\/p>\n

Josiah Quincy Upper School students and Gretchen Fougere, ENG associate dean for outreach and diversity, who says ENG’s goal is \u201cto broaden and build the pipeline from K-12 schools into engineering.\u201d Photos by Cydney Scott.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

It\u2019s a warm spring morning at the Josiah Quincy Upper School<\/a>\u00a0in downtown Boston, and the two dozen ninth-graders entering Mr. Warner\u2019s classroom reluctantly remove their earbuds and set down their iced coffees. Their faces seem to say: Light waves? What could be interesting about light waves?<\/p>\n

But then the 10 College of Engineering undergraduate \u201cInspiration Ambassadors\u201d scattered around the room introduce the teens to their own 9-volt batteries, circuit boards, LEDs, and voltmeters. Working in pairs, the Quincy School students must connect their LEDs to batteries, measure the voltages that create blue, red, green, and orange light, and match that to the longest and shortest wavelengths. From that, they will see firsthand Planck\u2019s Law, which says energy and wavelength are inversely proportionate. Suddenly the room is full of cheers, groans, and urgent questions.<\/p>\n

Hands-on makes all the difference.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a small step toward ENG\u2019s strategic goal \u201cto broaden and build the pipeline from K-12 schools into engineering,\u201d says Gretchen Fougere, ENG associate dean for outreach and diversity. \u201cIt\u2019s important that we not let talent go to waste in underrepresented groups such as women and minorities. We need everybody who\u2019s capable and interested in becoming an engineer to be ready and able to do that.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Technology Innovation Scholars Program<\/a> (TISP), founded by Fougere in 2011, sends ENG undergrads into classrooms as Inspiration Ambassadors to get middle and high school students excited about science and to open their minds to the field as a possible career. Many, as at the Quincy School, are African American or Hispanic, and girls make up roughly half the students.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll of the kids get super-excited because they don\u2019t realize the potential they have,\u201d says Inspiration Ambassador Alyssa Liem (ENG\u201916), who studies mechanical engineering. \u201cWhen they have the ability to do something creative, to make their own code or make their own design, they see: I can do this. That\u2019s the best thing we can provide for them\u2014the confidence.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fougere has so far overseen several TISP outreach programs. One, which reached 3,000 students this year alone, sends ENG undergrads back to their high schools or middle schools all around the country during the midyear break to spread the engineering gospel. In another they mentor the FIRST<\/a>\u00a0(For Inspiration & Recognition of Science & Technology) robotics teams at various Boston area schools. The mission of\u00a0the nonprofit FIRST, founded by Dean Kamen (Hon.\u201906),\u00a0is to inspire young people to be science and technology leaders.\u00a0Partner organizations, including AT&T, NASA, Accenture, Ametek, and the Ingalls Foundation, help fund the TISP program and have also hired numerous engineers from among the Ambassadors.<\/p>\n

\"Helped<\/p>\n

Carlo Quicho (ENG\u201918) (left) with Josiah Quincy School students Ada Tsang, 14, and Li Yu, 14, as they work on an experiment using voltmeters and LEDs.<\/em><\/p>\n

In the Quincy School program, funded by a $145,000 grant from AT&T, the ENG undergraduates work with two classes over two years, testing and debriefing students at the end of each year to quantify the program\u2019s effect. The overarching plan is to spread BU\u2019s TISP model to universities and colleges around the country.<\/p>\n

Among the engineering challenges put to the Quincy students in the first year were assembling and testing their own fuel cells, building wind turbines to generate energy, and communicating by fiber optics. \u201cI didn\u2019t know any of this stuff beforehand,\u201d says ninth grader Evan Chen. \u201cNow I know a little more about engineering, what they\u2019re doing.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Quincy students enjoy projects like making a wind turbine most, because they\u2019re actually building something, says Liem. Working with their hands is a lot more exciting than hearing someone lecture. \u201cIt became a competition of how much voltage they could get from their wind turbine, redesigning and redesigning until they finally got what satisfied them,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

\u201cSometimes time runs out and they\u2019re still trying to redesign and begging for just one more try,\u201d says Russell Thompson (ENG\u201916). \u201cThat\u2019s fun.\u201d<\/p>\n

It also does a lot for the Inspiration Ambassadors, who are well aware that their chosen field skews white and male.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve always wanted to increase the diversity in engineering, because I don\u2019t feel like we have a lot of minorities or a lot of women,\u201d says biomedical engineering major Lidia De Barros (ENG\u201917), who is originally from Cape Verde. \u201cI felt like this would give me an opportunity to reach the actual demographic of Boston, not just those who have an opportunity to come to BU, and reach out to everyone at once.\u201d<\/p>\n

Half of the ENG students applying to the TISP program are female and a quarter of them are underrepresented minorities, and these rates are two to three times higher than the ENG student population. About 100 undergraduates apply for the program each year, twice as many as Fougere can take.<\/p>\n

De Barros and others say the program also helps them develop leadership skills that will be useful after they graduate, from coordinating a diverse group to learning to communicate science concepts at a level that anyone can understand\u2014something that could be useful later in dealing with business clients. \u201cEngineers need to be able not only to create stuff, but to understand what it means to society,\u201d Fougere says.<\/p>\n

\"Graphic<\/p>\n

Graphic by Jan Smith, College of Engineering.<\/em><\/p>\n

TISP may be even more meaningful for students like Thompson, who is in the five-year STEM Educator-Engineer Program<\/a> (STEEP), a partnership between ENG and the School of Education. STEEP students earn a bachelor\u2019s in an engineering discipline and a master\u2019s in teaching, equipping them to teach the STEM fields (science, technology, engineering, and math) in middle schools and high schools across the country.<\/p>\n

The success of TISP is exemplified by Rahat Khan (ENG\u201917), whose first connection with the program was as a 10th-grader at the John D. O\u2019Bryant School of Mathematics and Science<\/a>\u00a0in Roxbury, when TISP students began mentoring his FIRST robotics team.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt sort of gives you a sense of connection that you don\u2019t necessarily get with a teacher,\u201d says Khan, who even then knew he wanted to study engineering. \u201cIn high school, you might have a notion of what mechanical engineering might be, but it\u2019s not the same as you envision it to be. Talking with the ENG students helped me understand what each of the engineering fields actually is.\u201d<\/p>\n

Now Khan is studying mechanical engineering at ENG on a BU Community Service Award scholarship<\/a>\u00a0and is a TISP Inspiration Ambassador. He has returned to speak to middle-schoolers at the O\u2019Bryant School over winter break and is leading four other ambassadors in mentoring FIRST robotics students at the Academy of the Pacific Rim Charter Public School<\/a>\u00a0in Hyde Park for a second year.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt feels very rewarding when you see that the students are finally getting results and understanding what they\u2019re doing,\u201d he says. \u201cIt\u2019s even more rewarding when some of them show interest in engineering. And even if they don\u2019t, it feels like an accomplishment.\u201d<\/p>\n

Author, Joel Brown can be reached at jbnbpt@bu.edu<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

ENG brings engineering to schools to bring students to engineering Josiah Quincy Upper School students and Gretchen Fougere, ENG associate dean for outreach and diversity, who says ENG’s goal is \u201cto broaden and build the pipeline from K-12 schools into engineering.\u201d Photos by Cydney Scott. It\u2019s a warm spring morning at the Josiah Quincy Upper […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7048,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[8],"tags":[88,109,126,13,65,235,140,39,66],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/federal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4966"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/federal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/federal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/federal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7048"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/federal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4966"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/federal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4966\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4970,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/federal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4966\/revisions\/4970"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/federal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4966"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/federal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4966"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/federal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4966"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}