EDUCATION INITIATIVES

www.nae.edu  |  www.naf.org  |  www.nacme.org

To help better prepare minority students to pursue opportunities available in STEM fields, PLTW, the National Academy Foundation (NAF), and the National Action Council for Minorities in Engineering (NACME) have partnered to create a network of urban Academies of Engineering. These small learning communities will offer PLTW’s proven project-based engineering curriculum in a unique model developed specifically for urban high schools. The Academy of Engineering program began at 13 pilot sites during the 2008–09 school year. Whereas PLTW and NAF will focus on what goes on inside the Academy of Engineering classrooms, NACME will leverage the support of its board members—including the nation’s leading science, technology, and engineering firms—to provide support to academy teachers, students, and parents in activities outside class. Several leading foundations and corporations are helping support the Academy of Engineering program. The initial plan calls for 110 new Academies of Engineering to be established over the next four years, with the goal of developing a national network of mostly urban academies whose graduates are well prepared for college engineering programs.

www.nae.edu/cms/13891.aspx

PLTW and the National Alliance for Partnerships in Equity (NAPE) Education Foundation are working collaboratively with the Engineering Equity Extension Service (EEES) offered by the National Academy of Engineering to identify and train a cadre of master teachers who will train others to integrate gender equity principles into the PLTW Summer Training Institutes. The goal of this collaboration is to increase the participation of girls in PLTW programs across the country. To accomplish this mission, the team is focusing on three priority areas: providing professional development on equity in engineering education to master teachers and affiliate professors; designing and implementing an “Equity in Engineering” professional development workshop for guidance counselors; and recommending changes to the PLTW curriculum to incorporate equity in instruction and offer resources and student-based activities that will appeal to a more diverse student population.

www.nasa.gov/centers/dryden

The Dryden Flight Research Center of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center have collaborated with PLTW to develop Aerospace Engineering curricula and fill the STEM pipeline. The Dryden partnership leveraged the research center’s specialized aerospace knowledge and innovation with PLTW’s experience and success in writing a curriculum and training teachers for its instruction. The result is a world-class curriculum introducing middle school students to the technology of aeronautics, propulsion, and rocketry, and offering high school students the opportunity to learn about aerodynamics, astronautics, space–life sciences, and systems engineering through hands-on engineering projects and problems. The Goddard initiative focuses on a middle school and high school cross-disciplinary project designed to infuse STEM content through an exciting “lunar exploration” theme, which includes the opportunity for students to remotely explore a lunar surface. Participating schools are required to send a team composed of a PLTW teacher, a math teacher, and a science teacher to a weeklong summer training session.