Topics of Interest for Readers
- Professors:
- Want to offer e4usa on your college campus? Check out the New Professor Professional Development!
- All Readers:
- Want to hear from e4usa partner post-secondary institutions? Read about e4usa College Week!
- Check out how e4usa was represented at the NCSSS professional conference!
- Read about how e4usa hosted a webinar for the communities of Ghana Champion Schools!
Happy Holidays from e4usa!
e4usa wishes each and everyone some joyous time off as we celebrate the end of 2023 and the start of 2024!
e4usa College Week
e4usa is happy to announce its upcoming College Week, which is scheduled to run from Tuesday, January 23rd through Friday, January 26th. This week will provide high school students, teachers, parents, counselors and other stakeholders the opportunity to hear from e4usa partner post-secondary institutions. Our ultimate goal will be to share with our high school community how students can continue their education at institutions that are already involved with e4usa. In addition to learning about how students can receive college/university credit for e4usa, they will also hear about great engineering majors offered by these institutions. Participants will also have the chance to learn about special programs for pre-college students like engineering/STEM summer camps offered on different partner campuses.
The week will start with a virtual e4usa College and Career Night on Tuesday, January 23rd from 9:00-10:30pm (AST)/8:00-9:30pm (EST)/7:00-8:30pm (CST)/6:00-7:30pm (MST)/5:00-6:30pm (PST)/3:00-4:30pm (HST). This will offer participants the chance to hear from some of our colleges/universities in a "live event" format, and learn more about the benefits of engineering and e4usa. Then, from Wednesday, January 24th - Friday, January 26th, different colleges and universities will host their own short virtual events that are designed to inform participants about specific offerings at their institutions. You will have the chance in the coming weeks to choose specific events at institutions that you may wish to consider or perhaps have not thought of in the past. While the live event will not take place at a time suitable for live Ghanaian participation, we do hope to partner with KNUST and Kumasi Technical to offer appropriately timed sessions during the January 24-26 window.
Please look for more information on the virtual e4usa College and Career Night as well as the individual virtual events in the near future. We plan to share information on how to register for these various activities soon. We look forward to seeing you in January and wish you a happy and safe start to the holiday season!
Want to offer e4usa on your college campus?
Are you looking to refresh your Intro to Engineering course to include authentic engineering design problems for real clients? Or perhaps you need a new course to keep first year students excited about engineering while you build their math skills? What about a course for non-majors to build their engineering literacy? e4usa can be scaled to suit all of these audiences on your campus.
New Professor Professional Development (Online)
July 29-31, 2024
9 AM - 4 PM ET
August 1, 2024
9 AM - 12 PM ET
e4usa Hosted Webinar for Communities of Ghana Champion Schools
On December 13th, e4usa hosted a webinar for the communities of our Ghanaian e4usa Champion high schools and universities. The aim was to excite and inform the school leaders, counselors, and parents about the e4usa Champion's work, and we did just that!
Esteemed speakers included Kwadwo Mensah-Darkwa, e4usa Champion from KNUST, and Aaron Akwaboah, Strategy and Innovation Director, Advisor to the Ghana Minister of Education. Engineering for US All was represented by e4usa Executive Director, Dr. Stacy Klein-Gardner, Professional Learning Director, Dr. Jenny Kouo, and e4usa Coach, Dave Eisenberg. A webinar favorite was a video of highlights of our partnership!
The University of Maryland, the Ghanaian Ministry of Education, and the Otumfuo Foundation have partnered to provides access to a wider audience of teachers and students so that even more students, those in urban and rural parts of Ghana, feel connected to engineering concepts, practices, and skills.
The e4usa Ghana Partnership is the first opportunity for Ghanaian educators to become full members of the e4usa teaching program, including access to the e4usa engineering curriculum and the full suite of e4usa teacher supports including a full year of professional development opportunities provided by e4usa staff, an e4usa peer teacher coach, teaching materials support, and university and industry liaison collaboration support.
Our partnership began in March 2023 with Dr. Darryll Pines, President of the University of Maryland College Park, visiting Ghana and establishing several MOUs with Ghanaian universities and the Ministry of Education. In April 2023, e4usa team members visited Ghana as well, running three three-hour workshops in Accra, Cape Coast and Kumasi. After a three-round review process including the initial in-person workshop, two online workshops, and three teacher implementations and reflections, e4usa welcomed its first cohort of 12 e4usa Champion teachers and professors in the summer of 2023. These teachers and professors are now implementing e4usa in their classrooms across Ghana.
e4usa at 2023 National Consortium of Secondary STEM Schools Professional Conference
Phoenix, Arizona
"The National Consortium of Secondary STEM Schools represents many of the top-ranked programs in the U.S. and around the globe committed to transforming science, technology, engineering, and mathematics education through school wide initiatives that include authentic research or project-based learning. NCSSS defines STEM schools as those that prepare students to be leaders in global innovation by engaging them in rigorous, relevant, and integrated learning experiences.
The NCSSS Professional Conference is all about connection and collaboration. This annual event brings together teachers, administrators, and counselors in STEM education to share best practices with other STEM professionals to transform education, empower teachers and improve STEM students’ success.
While at the conference I gave 2 presentations in which I highlighted my e4usa student work, I got to tour the Dreamscape Learn facility at ASU, and meet up with Dr. Medha Dalal.
My first presentation was a snapshot of the journey of my 10th grade e4usa classes at Eleanor Roosevelt High School. The focus of this presentation was on how students utilize the engineering design process to identify problems and develop solutions. This allowed me to highlight a lot of my students' community partner projects from unit 4. Below are my key talking points from this presentation.
- Team Building: Strategies and activities for developing student collaboration.
- Preparing Students for large scale projects: Utilizing the engineering design process in a variety of activities to initiate collaboration and foster skill development.
- Finding a community partner: Identifying project challenges relevant to the wants and needs of the students
- Assessment: Incorporating formative and summative assessments in team projects.
My second presentation was a collaboration with my school districts’ outdoor education center on green schools and establishing a culture of education. This was another change for me to highlight a lot of my e4usa students’ work. One of the highlighted projects is a continuation from a student team’s Unit 7 Elevator Pitch. The students identified a weather and erosion problem and presented their solution to the administration last year. This has led to the students working with a team of partners on a solution that combines their solution within an outdoor classroom."
-David Eisenberg
e4usa Teacher, Eleanor Roosevelt High School
e4usa Liaison Talks about Cyber Security
e4usa Industry Liaison Terri Hayes from Consultant came to Richard Montgomery High School to talk about cybersecurity. e4usa Teacher Kevin Martz noted, "It is a very timely topic, and she works in that field with the US government."
Re-Envisioning Robotics in Precollege Engineering Education: A Collective Partnership between e4usa & FIRST
On December 12th, e4usa held a webinar sharing about the partnership between e4usa and FIRST. e4usa is an emerging national initiative designed to demystify engineering and democratize engineering education “for all”. The program’s curriculum and professional learning support teachers and students using a project-based learning (PBL) approach designed to be accessible and engaging. The PBL approach provides students with a hands-on experience in engineering, which prepares them for engagement in FIRST Robotics Competitions and future STEM careers.
Working together with a cohort of teachers from across the country have allowed the research team to identify barriers to participation, while developing novel strategies to overcome these challenges. This includes a set of emergent blended e4usa-FIRST models and the launch of a new open source engineering education platform called the Experiential Robotics Platform or XRP (experientialrobotics.org)
This session shared the team’s findings to date and provided available techniques and resources to support more pre-college students and teachers with access to STEM robotics programs.
This webinar is part of a larger series on building community and reflecting to re-envision in engineering education. This material is based on work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. EEC-1733004.
e4usa 2024-2025 Applications
Applications are open for the 2024-2025 school year!
Application links:
e4usa Maryland Scholarship Application Open!
e4usa Maryland scholarship applications are open now!
There are scholarships available for 20 Maryland teachers to receive a one-year membership with e4usa. Each participating teacher or professor will receive a summer stipend of $1600. View the informational webinar recording or find the links to apply, below!
Application Links!
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Family members of e4usa students are encouraged to sign up for our e4usa mailing list! We will use this list to send updates about important events and activities that you may be interested in related to our e4usa program.
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We welcome all schools to learn more about this effort by exploring our website and signing up for our newsletter here. As always, we appreciate any feedback or suggestions you may have for our newsletter. Look for us on social media platforms with the hashtag #e4usa.