Systems Engineering Educators Workshop

A Systems Engineering Educators Workshop was developed with a target audience of middle school and high school teachers. The objective was to introduce topics that could be easily brought into middle and high school classrooms with active learning exercises related to industrial and systems engineering, with an emphasis on the aerospace industry. Teachers learned concepts of systems engineering, design notebooks and engineering drawings, reverse engineering, transportation optimization problems, and shortest path network problems. They also toured a local distribution center. Several of the activities were based on engineering education websites, and information about further resources was included so that the teachers could continue to integrate more engineering content into their classrooms. For the activities that were introduced during the 2-day workshop, materials were provided to help the teachers adapt the activity for their classroom, demonstrate sample student worksheets, and link to K-12 grade level expectations or standards. Graduate and undergraduate engineering students were hired to work with the faculty on program development and recruiting, administration of the program, and follow-up during the school year. To entice K-12 teachers to participate during their summer break, a stipend was provided for up to ten participants. A project work site was set up online to allow the teachers to continue to communicate as they implement the activities in their classrooms, and provide further feedback and implementation assessment with different settings. Feedback after the workshop was very positive, and the organizers hope to repeat and expand the program.