2024 RET Program

The M-NeD RET hosted 10 teachers during the summer of 2024 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 the Bioprospecting lab.

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 70 people attending from UT Austin, local school districts, and local industry.

Teachers received extensive support in the development of their RET curriculum. The RET program hosted a 2 day training for RETs this summer on Design Based Learning, the Engineering Design Process, and Engineering Habits of Mind providing them with a tools, strategies and techniques for the development of their RET curriculum. RETs were matched with a mentor teacher (past RET well versed in the program and curriculum development strategies) who met with their mentees in small groups and individually throughout the course of the summer to guide curriculum development. Program staff met regularly with mentor teachers to assess RET progress towards goals and provide support. RETs submitted rough curriculum drafts mid-way through the program to gather feedback more formally and then submitted their final plans the last week of the program.

2024 Program Schedule of Activities