The focus of this poster is the educational programming associated with an NSF Engineering Research Center (ERC). CISTAR, the Center for Innovative and Strategic Transformation of Alkane Resources, is a new NSF ERC in its second year. The center's mission is to create a transformative engineered system to convert light hydrocarbons from shale resources to chemicals and transportation fuels in smaller, modular, local, and highly networked processing plants. The center, a collaborative network of five universities, is supported by four pillars: workforce development, diversity, industry and research. This poster will outline programming and evaluation related to workforce development and diversity including an RET for high school teachers, an REU for undergraduates and a Young Scholars program for high school students. Special emphasis will be made to describe the steps taken to launch the educational programming during the first year of the center.
The overarching broader impact goal of CISTAR Workforce Development is to create a technically excellent and inclusive community of hydrocarbon systems researchers, learners, and teachers through competency-based education, best-practice mentoring, and growth in key professional skills. CISTAR aims to create an environment where people of all backgrounds are welcomed, supported, and respected.
The center engages an external evaluation team with extensive experience in evaluating STEM education programs, technology-based projects, professional development programming, and materials development projects. The evaluators administered pre and post program surveys and interviews to both participants and mentors to address the impact of the project on the participants, ask whether the goals and objectives were accomplished as planned and identify strengths and limitations of the project. These evaluation strategies will be detailed as well as modifications to programming based on the results of this assessment.
Maeve Drummond Oakes is the Associate Director of Education for the NSF Engineering Research Center, CISTAR. She has extensive experience in academic program management at Purdue University, successfully leading programs at undergraduate and graduate education in the School of Civil of Engineering. In Biomedical Engineering she led the creation of new experiential activities for students with industry and through study abroad. As the university coordinator for the Purdue EPICS program she was responsible for the development of a consortium of more than 40 universities, globally. At CISTAR she oversees all of the programming for CISTAR's engineering workforce development pillar.
http://orcid.org/https://0000-0002-4229-6183
Purdue University-Main Campus, West Lafayette (College of Engineering)
[biography]
Monica E. Cardella is the Director of the INSPIRE Research Institute for Pre-College Engineering and is an Associate Professor of Engineering Education at Purdue University. She is also the Director for Pre-College Education for the Center for the Innovative and Strategic Transformation of Alkane Resources (CISTAR).
Dr. Mary Anne Sydlik is a Research Emerita involved in the external evaluation of a number of federally funded projects.
Dr. Sydlik's interests are in supporting efforts to improve the educational experiences and outcomes of undergraduate and graduate STEM students. She is or has been the lead external evaluator for a number of STEM and NSF-funded projects, including an ERC education project, an NSF TUES III, a WIDER project, an NSF EEC project through WGBH Boston, two NSF RET projects, an S-STEM project, a CPATH project, and a CCLI Phase II project. She also currently serves as the internal evaluator for WMU’s Howard Hughes Medical project, and has contributed to other current and completed evaluations of NSF-funded projects.
Kristin Everett is a research associate at the Center for Research on Instructional Change in Postsecondary Education (CRICPE) at Western Michigan University and conducts program evaluations and provides consulting services for education, health-care, and nonprofit organizations.
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