2023 RET Program

The M-NeD RET hosted 13 teachers during the summer of 2023 for a 5 and a half week in-person program at the University of Texas at Austin. Teachers were paired with a fellow teacher and assigned a faculty and graduate student mentor who facilitated their lab and research training. The teachers participated in a variety of professional development and curriculum development activities, in addition to their research time spent in the research laboratory. Examples of those professional development activities include: workshops on Nanotechnology & Materials Science, Strategies to Include ALL Students in STEM, STEM integration in middle school classroom,Engineering Habits of Mind for K-12 students, Design Based Learning training, Careers in Engineering Panel with UT Austin Faculty and learning tours of the UT Austin TACC Supercomputer and Texas Invention Works.

Through the experience of the RET Program, RET staff and faculty have seen first-hand that middle school teachers are able to: 1) create lessons inspired by their nanotechnology research to take back to their classrooms, and 2) teach their students about engineering and various foundational elements of nanotechnology, all without needing high tech facilities such as clean rooms or fabrication laboratories. For example, a middle school engineering teacher from this summer’s program explored how using electrochromic nanocrystals to coat windows can control light and heat. The RET participant became fascinated by this research how the engineering design process worked and was able to replicate the experiment in a classroom setting using macro, instead of nano sized materials. The lesson developed engaged students in light (visible or not) affects heat by measuring the LUX potential of a piece of plexiglass ‘window’ when it was covered by various films. Students then used the engineering design process to create their own ‘smart windows’. The lesson, which is directly tied to the NGSS standards for middle school science, familiarizes students with the engineering design process, the concept of light and how light transfer’s energy, and aided them in understanding heat transfer and how that effects general heating, cooling and energy consumption of homes and buildings.

RETs had opportunities to present around their scientific and curriculum development achievements via the final Poster Symposium highlighting both their curriculum ideas and scientific research. The event was held the final week of the program and RETs were encouraged to invite their teaching colleagues and school/district administrators to attend. The Symposium was held in the flagship Engineering and Education Building on the main UT campus and garnered a large internal and external audience with more than 80 people attending from UT Austin, local school districts, and local industry.

A new component added this year to the program was a lab video the RETs were asked to create documenting some of their experience in the lab. Teachers were asked to record a 3-5 minute video introducing the viewers to their lab and the research they conducted over the summer, in addition to sharing about their successes and challenges in the program. These videos will not only be useful in recruitment for future years, but teachers were very excited to take these back into their classrooms to share with their students. RETs indicate one of the transformative aspects of the program is they are learning how to be engineers and scientists and are placed in the role of student learner again. Sharing this perspective with their students is a powerful way to highlight resilience in action and cultivate a sense of belonging in STEM fields.

2023 Program Schedule of Activities