New York public school students are about to begin playing instructional games created by faculty and students at Hostos Community College forGame-Framed Mathematics and Science (G-FMS), a National Science Foundation Advanced Technological Education project. The games created to help Hostos’ digital media students succeed in remedial and introductory math and science courses are now aiming for wider use among younger students.
G-FMS Principal Investigator Rees Shad said middle school and high school teachers in District 7, the region of the New York City Public Schools in the South Bronx, are beginning to incorporate the games in their classroom instruction. With the assistance of Hostos President David Gómez, Shad and his team will soon meet with top New York City School officials about using the games in fourth grade classrooms throughout the city.
The 81 college teams in the first four Mentor-Connect cohorts increased the geographic diversity of colleges submitting proposals to the National Science Foundation’s ATE program: the selected colleges are in regions within 27 different states where an ATE grant has either never been funded, or has not been funded in the past 10 years. Since NSF started the ATE program in 1993 its competitive review process has awarded ATE grants in all 50 states and Puerto Rico. However, many of these grants have gone to colleges in metropolitan areas, and often these institutions have received multiple ATE grants.
Evidence that Mentor-Connect is adding geographic diversity to NSF-ATE proposals comes from the fact that 55 of the 61 colleges in the first three Mentor-Connect cohorts submitted proposals to NSF.
While leading a tour of Irvine Valley College’s labs on February 10, Microbiology Professor Emalee Mackenzie tells c3bc Project Director Russ H. Read about her plans to add medical device manufacturing courses to the biotech offerings in Orange County, California.
As Microbiology Professor Emalee Mackenzie took in the scene of 36 medical device industry representatives and bioscience academicians in Irvine Valley College‘s conference space, she could not help smiling. She was happy that the professional connections she made through MentorLinks led to her hosting the Fifth Medical Device Skill Standards Meeting on February 10.
“It’s all those connections, and meeting them at ATE … that have been tremendous. Vivian opened doors and made all this possible,” Mackenzie said, referring to the introductions Vivian Ngan-Winward, her MentorLinks mentor, provided at the 2015 ATE Principal Investigators Conference.
The two-week practicum combines high-level technical instruction with practical approaches to energy challenges. For instance, one of the class activities last summer used soda cans to build photovoltaic cells for residential solar energy systems.
Several $1,500 stipends are available for two-year college faculty and high school teachers to attend the program. Applications will be accepted from February 15 to May 15. The program will be offered from June 13 to 24 at Missoula College in Missoula, Montana, and from June 27 to July 8 at Blackfeet Community College in Browning, Montana. The Blackfeet Nation, which the college serves, is located at the gateway to Glacier National Park.
Students at the 2015 Sustainable Energy Practicum with the devices they made with readily available materials.
Three building trades instructors from Blackfeet Community College have been involved in the program this past year, according to Bradley Layton, an associate professor in the Applied Computing and Engineering Technology Department at Missoula College and principal investigator of the National Science Foundation Advanced Technological Education project that includes the practicum. “We’ve been involving them as much as we can,” he said of the tribal college’s faculty.
The two weeks of instruction in classrooms, labs, and outdoor settings are open to educators from tribal colleges, community colleges, and high schools; students from Blackfeet Community College and Montana high schools; and students from around the nation who are enrolled in Missoula College’s online energy technology degree program. The required practicum for the online associate degree is the two-week sustainable energy course and a one-week circuits lab course. Program graduates include technicians and individuals who work on sustainable energy policies for their employers.
Game-Framed Mathematics and Science (G-FMS), a National Science Foundation Advanced Technological Education project. The games created to help Hostos’ digital media students succeed in remedial and introductory math and science courses are now aiming for wider use among younger students.
has achieved some initial, promising results.
