Go Engineering! goes out to thousands of K–12 educators, reaching into America’s classrooms to promote the importance of engineering education and explore the many ways that engineering can help teachers meet the challenge of making mathematics and science come alive for students.

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News Bytes: The Latest in K–12 Engineering Education
–Senate Committee Slashes Funding for School Reform
–48.2 Million students Expected in Public Schools This Year

Factoids
–Interesting Facts and Statistics for You to Use in the Classroom

Outreach Up Close
–Finalists for “America’s Top Young Scientist of the Year” Converge in Washington
–Sir Isaac Newton Rocks!

Features
–An Eco–Friendly Career
–Geometry, My Dear Watson!

Links
–See ASEE's New K–12 Website At: http://www.engineeringk12.org
–Department of Education Forecasts Funding:
http://www.ed.gov/fund/grant/find/edlite–forecast.html

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SENATE COMMITTEE SLASHES FUNDING FOR SCHOOL REFORM

The Senate Appropriations Committee took $280 million out of a fund dedicated to school reform late last month. Although the bill funding the Department of Education provides increases for the majority of federal K–12 programs—a $1.1 billion increase each for Title I and special education, a $100 million increase for Reading First, $30 million more for state assessment grants, and a $40 million increase to help subsidize state data management costs—funding for school reform, or the Title V program, was cut completely.

Title V of the No Child Left Behind Act is a formula grant for supporting state and local education reform activities. It offers great flexibility for the use of funds, as long as money is allocated to school improvement. The few limitations and lack of specific purpose of the program led the Committee to slash funding from nearly $300 million to $20 million. The loss of money comes at a price for some states. In North Carolina, 32 staff positions within the state department of education will likely be eliminated because of the cut. The appropriations bill will now head to the full Senate for review.

For information on how to contact members of the Senate Appropriations Committee, visit: http://appropriations.senate.gov/members/members.htm.

48.2 MILLION STUDENTS EXPECTED IN PUBLIC SCHOOLS THIS YEAR

The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), projects that about 48.2 million preK–12 students will be enrolled in public schools this year—135,000 more than last year. According to The Condition of Education 2004, a federal statistical report released in June, the higher numbers result from increased immigration and the "baby boom echo"—a 25 percent increase in annual births from the mid–1970s to 1990. Enrollment in public schools is expected to reach 49.7 million by 2013.

You can read The Condition of Education 2004 at the NCES. (Requires Adobe’s Acrobat Reader).

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The need for improving K–12 engineering education:

The news from New York on math is mixed. The New York Times reports that new test results in New York show a rise of 6.7 percentage points in the number of eighth graders meeting state standards this year. However, the results also reveal that almost 60 percent of eighth graders in New York City are still not math–proficient. “It points to the weakness of middle school and the lack of quality education in a lot of middle schools,” says Jill Chaifetz, executive director of Advocates for Children.

To read more about these results in the New York Times article, click here.

Fun facts for the classroom:

No, you’re not being punked! It’s true, Ashton Kutcher of “That 70s Show” majored in biochemical engineering at the University of Iowa. 

To help your students learn more about biomedical engineering, visit The Biomedical Engineering Network.  If they want to know more about chemical engineering, point them to The American Institute of Chemical Engineers.

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40 middle school students from around the nation have made it to the final round of the 2004 Discovery Channel Young Scientist Challenge (DCYSC). Now in its sixth year, the DCYSC program was born out of a partnership between Discovery Communications and Science Service in response to America’s growing science and math gap. The competition, which is open to students in grades 5–8, was launched to nurture the next generation of American scientists at the middle school level—the very age when interest in science and math begins to decline.

The 40 finalists come from 16 states, and were chosen from a semifinalist pool of 400 middle school students. Initially, 1,795 students from 41 states and Puerto Rico submitted entries to the contest. The “Final Forty” were chosen based upon the excellence of their projects presented at local Science Service–affiliated science fairs across the country. The advancing projects span various scientific fields, from biochemistry to zoology to engineering. During the DCYSC finals, which will be held from October 23–27 in Washington, D.C., the finalists will present their research projects to judges to demonstrate their communication skills and creative thinking. One student will go home as “America’s Top Young Scientist of the Year.”

“Discovery is teaching these future leaders not only the value of science but also the importance of effectively communicating their knowledge to others,” said Judith A. McHale, President and CEO of Discovery Communications.

To learn more about the 2004 Discovery Channel Young Scientist Challenge, including a list of the 40 finalists, the titles of their winning entries, and how to get nominated for next year’s competition, visit: http://www.discovery.com/dcysc.

SIR ISAAC NEWTON ROCKS!

A spoonful of rock–and–roll helps the physics go down. Well, at least according to NASA and Honeywell.

A new partnership between Honeywell Hometown Solutions and NASA is bringing a rock–and–roll education program entitled “FMA Live! Where Science Rocks,” to 45 middle schools across the country. The opening tour is named after Sir Isaac Newton’s Second Law of Motion, and teaches Newton’s Three Laws of Motion and the Universal Law of Gravity through a diverse cast of actors, music, videos, and demonstrations. The mission of the outreach program is to display the relevance of the natural sciences to students’ daily lives, showing them that understanding science is critical to understanding the world around them. The show delivers solid science content that supports the learning objectives outlined by the National Science Education standards for Physical Science for grades 5–8.

This “musical frenzy of fun and excitement” will tour the country for 18 weeks this year, and is expected to visit more than 150 middle schools over the next three years.

To learn more about FMA Live!, visit: http://www.fmalive.com.

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AN ECO–FRIENDLY CAREER
By Anna Mulrine

This profile is taken from Engineering, Go For It!, ASEE’s new guidebook for high school students. You can order copies of Engineering, Go For It! at the EngineeringK12 Center website.

Alexandria Boehm grew up in Oahu, Hawaii, immersed in the ocean. “I spent a lot of time in the water,” she recalls, “surfing, snorkeling, SCUBA diving.” But when Boehm started college, “I didn’t know I’d end up studying coastal waters,” she says. “It just sort of developed that way.” She does, however, remember what helped her decide to take up environmental engineering. In her mom’s backyard in Hawaii, there’s a canal. “We used to swim in there,” she recalls. “But now it’s so disgusting and polluted.”

Today, as an environmental engineering professor at Stanford University, she brings groups of students back to the ocean she grew up loving. While recently investigating the microbes in coastal runoff that can sicken people and animals like sea otters, Boehm enlisted students to monitor the beach waters. But environmental engineers not only work to solve the problems of polluted runoff into ocean waters and wetlands, they also investigate ways to make air cleaner, and develop new methods of making water drinkable.

Boehm teaches students that environmental engineering is an ever–changing discipline. One of the hot fields of study is called bioremediation—the process of using organisms to eat up, say, nasty oil spills. “If you feed the organism molasses, it will grow, and help to degrade waste products,” Boehm explains. Environmental engineers are also just beginning to learn that common drugs like aspirin, Prozac, and ibuprofen are increasingly ending up in the ocean. Engineers study their potential effects, especially how they might interfere with the life cycles of marine organisms.

Boehm recently enlisted the help of a group from a nearby high school to collect water samples. She knows from her own surfing days that direct contact with the environment can help spark a lifelong interest in the subject. “You can learn about the tides and the waves,” she says, “but when you’re sitting on the beach for six hours straight, you actually see the tide coming up. That’s what really drives their curiosity and their desire to learn more about it.”

To read Anna Mulrine’s entire article, visit the EngineeringK12 Center website.

To learn more about environmental engineering, visit the American Academy of Environmental Engineers at: http://www.aaee.net.

GEOMETRY, MY DEAR WATSON!

Think about these literary titles for a second, math teachers: "The Priory School" in the The Return of Sherlock Holmes, by Arthur Conan Doyle, Shirley Jackson’s short story, "The Lottery," and Gulliver's Travels, by Jonathan Swift. Sound like stories you could use in your math classes? No? Well, The Eisenhower National Clearinghouse (ENC) thinks they do.

The ENC, which provides print and web resources for math and science teachers, offers a number of book titles—fiction and nonfiction—that feature mathematics in a way that is accessible to students who are studying either algebra or geometry. Some of the suggested titles, like the ones above, may seem a bit strange to use in a math class at first, but were purposely selected because they include easily identifiable mathematics and are in general just fun to read.

After assigning these readings, ENC offers discussion questions to connect the stories to larger mathematical principles. To continue with the interdisciplinary approach, ENC asks teachers to use the books in collaboration with English, history, science, or art teachers.

Many teachers agree that hands–on learning is the best method for attracting more students to math, science, and engineering. An “interdisciplinary approach” to teaching math, science, and engineering makes them more interesting, and helps demonstrate their relevancy in the “real world.” Adding a technological spin to other subjects, and vice versa, can be the key to making them come alive for students.

You can find more books that use math along with other classroom resources on ENC Online’s Classroom Calendar.

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SEE ASEE'S NEW K–12 WEBSITE AT:
http://www.engineeringk12.org

ASEE’s newly re–designed EngineeringK12 Center website is finally here and is a great way for you to get your students excited about engineering! The Center’s latest online home now includes dynamic new features designed to draw in your students, such as an eye–catching and educational overview of the different engineering disciplines and a great college search database to help them find the best fit in an engineering school. Teachers, you can access a host of free, online lesson plans to use in your classrooms, as well as an expansive, searchable Outreach Program Database. Bookmark this site, teachers! It’s sure to come in handy!

Visit the EngineeringK12 Center at: http://www.engineeringk12.org

DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION FORECASTS FUNDING:
http://www.ed.gov/fund/grant/find/edlite–forecast.html

K–12 educators in search of money might find this website hosted by the United States Department of Education useful. The document, called a “Forecast of Funding,” lists nearly all programs and competitions for which the Department of Education has requested or expects to request new award applications. It also provides actual or estimated deadline dates for turning in those applications. The lists include programs and competitions the Department has previously announced, as well as those it plans to announce later on.

To access the “Forecast of Funding,” visit,
http://www.ed.gov/fund/grant/find/edlite–forecast.html

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The Botball Educational Robotics Program for middle and high school students is now signing up teams to participate in the 04–05 program.  For more information, visit www.botball.org.

TOYchallenge, a national toy design challenge for 5th–8th graders, is accepting applicants until December 15, 2004.  Visit http://www.TOYchallenge.com to learn more.

"Engineers Can Do Anything"
The Engineering Education service Center is putting on a poster contest.  This year’s theme is "Engineers Can Do Anything."  Contest ends on November 30, 2004.  Learn more about the contest here.

The 2004–2005 Internet science & Technology Fair (ISTF) The University of Central Florida is looking for practicing or retired professionals to volunteer their support, expertise, and guidance as Technical Advisors for the 2004–2005 ISTF student teams.  For more information, contact Bruce Furino at director@istf.ucf.edu.