2009 MATC Professional Development Science and Math Summer Technology Institute

The summer institute consists of two parts that emphasize different outcomes and learning experiences. Part I (June 17-19) brings the teachers together at UN campuses in Lincoln and Omaha, where they interact with engineering researchers, graduate students, and professionals in the transportation industry. Presentations, tours of relevant sites, and conversations with peer teachers who participated in the summer institute in previous years are designed to help the visiting teachers develop lesson plans that they then test and refine during Part II (July 15-17) of the summer institute with the help of the participating students and implement in their own classes over the fall semester. The middle and high school students participate only during the second part of the institute.

This year, the institute’s agenda included visits to Union Pacific’s Harriman Dispatching Center and to the distribution center of Werner Enterprises (both in Omaha), which were aspects of the institute that the teachers particularly enjoyed and considered excellent sources of inspiration for math and science lesson plans. On the UP tour, the group was met at the recently renovated Harriman Center by Greg Garrison, Western Region General Supervisor, and Stan Vannier, Systems Development Manager, who explained the work of the train dispatchers—visible from the visitor gallery through glass walls—and answered the teachers’ numerous questions about the company and the career paths of their employees. At Werner Enterprises, institute participants attended presentations by Stefanie Christensen, HR Manager, and Amy Holmes, Training and Development Manager, which were tailored specifically to the teachers’ interests and highlighted information about the company and its trucks that lends itself to being incorporated into match and science assignments. After the presentations, a training coordinator showed the visitors how a truck is scaled and how the weight of the load is evenly distributed, and several volunteers had the chance to ride in one of Werner’s trucks.

On the first day of the summer institute, the Lincoln-based group also went on a tour of the crash test site at the Midwest Roadside Safety Facility, where Dr. Ronald Faller pointed out different guardrail systems currently being tested for safety and explained the process by which a car is brought to crash into them with the help of an intricate pulley system. As Jesse Andres, one of the participating teachers from Goodrich Middle School in Lincoln, commented, this tour was especially inspiring to him since it provided him with ideas he would like to pursue in developing lesson plans for the institute. He would be particularly interested, he said, in designing lessons that revolved around the changes in acceleration that occur in a crash test vehicle, which is pulled by another car with the help of a cable, as the pulley system is modified.

This year’s institute was the first to incorporate distance technology in the presentations by faculty members. Talks by Dr. Laurence Rilett and Dr. Aemal Khattak, for example, were broadcast live via video conferencing technology from the Lincoln campus to the Peter Kiewit Institute in Omaha, where half of the teachers attended many of the scheduled events. This new element of the workshop was popular with both presenters and participants and will continue to be integrated into future summer institutes. Erika Volker of Partnerships for Innovation also made use of this technology in her presentation on “Educating Diverse Audiences” on June 19, engaging both the Lincoln and the Omaha groups through assignments and questions designed to foster an exchange between the teachers in both locations.

For the second part of the summer institute from July 15-17, 2009, about ten of the teachers returned to the Lincoln and Omaha campuses of the University of Nebraska, where, with the help of the peer teachers and about twenty students, they tested the lesson plans they had been developing since the beginning of the summer program. The students, who are invited to this so-called “Engineering Experience Day” at the university each year as part of the institute, spend a day visiting different classrooms in small groups, where the participating teachers have prepared science experiments and presentations for them. In Jesse Andres’ classroom, for instance, rotating groups of about four to five students learned about levers and the effect that moving the fulcrum has on their balance. Through practical demonstrations and hands-on experimentation—for example, one student project involved balancing a meter stick (ruler) on a pencil and placing pennies of various weights and sizes on the ends to determine the moving location of the fulcrum—Andres was able to engage the students directly and to raise their interest in what might have otherwise been simply an abstract concept to them without any real-life applicability. He also incorporated examples that he had encountered during his tour of Werner Enterprises from the previous month into his presentations, explaining how the load of a truck must be balanced with the help of a movable fulcrum.

Following the teachers’ presentations on July 16, the students visiting the Lincoln campus witnessed a live crash test, toured several engineering labs, and visited a “Road and Rail” Mobile Training Lab, generously provided through the combined efforts of Central Community College in Hastings, Nebraska, and Mid-Plains Community College in North Platte, Nebraska. Only six of these highly sophisticated labs exist in the United States, as Dave Engel, Project Coordinator for Central Nebraska Transports the Future, explained, and the state-of-the-art train, flight, and motor vehicle simulators impressed the visiting students notably.

Continuing the success of previous years, the fourth Professional Development Science and Math Summer Technology Institute met with praise from the participating teachers, who especially appreciated the informative presentations by engineering researchers and the inspiration provided by the tours of leading transportation companies. The lesson plans they created testified to the enthusiasm and creativity inspired by the activities of the summer institute, which they in turn passed on to the visiting students, who seemed to enjoy the chance to learn about real-life transportation issues through hands-on experimentation very much.