We have successfully finished our summer program in our National Science Foundation (NSF) supported Research Experiences for Teachers (RET) Site entitled “Enriching the Professional Development of School Teachers & Community College Faculty in Rural Michigan - An RET Site on Smart Vehicles.” The summer program was six weeks long and hosted five community college faculty, five in-service teachers (high school science) and five pre-service teachers (integrated science majors). Participants are split into five groups and teamed up with an engineering faculty and an engineering undergraduate student each. During their 40 hours/week work schedule, participants have worked on faculty-supervised research projects for 25 hours/week and the rest was reserved for classroom unit plans that participants would work on developing.
This paper presents details about the RET Site’s management and discusses our experiences from lessons learned. Preliminary assessment results will be presented and discussed. Finally, we will conclude with the overall lessons we learned from this experience and discuss next summer’s plans as a result of our analysis and self-reflections.
Kumar Yelamarthi received his Ph.D. and M.S degree from Wright State University in 2008 and 2004, and B.E. from University of Madras, India in 2000. He is currently the Associate Dean and Professor in the College of Engineering at Tennessee Tech University. In the past, he served as the Director for School of Engineering and Technology, and Professor of Electrical & Computer Engineering and at Central Michigan University (CMU). He served as the chair for Electrical Engineering and Computer Engineering programs, and Assistant to the Dean of College of Science and Engineering at CMU. His research interest is in the areas of Internet of Things, wireless sensor networks, edge computing, embedded systems, and engineering education. He has published over 160 articles and delivered over 100 talks in these areas. He has successfully raised several externally funded grants of over $1.5 Million from organizations such as NSF, NASA, and the industry.
Throughout his career, Yelamarthi has launched multiple engineering programs, including undergraduate programs and 2+2 programs with international universities, as well as CMU’s graduate program in engineering. He has served as a chair, technical program committee chair, treasurer for several international conferences, and as a reviewer and panelist for numerous externally funded proposals. He served as editor for journal special issues, currently serves as the topic editor for Sensors, on the editorial board for Internet of Things journal, and International Journal of Forensic Software Engineering,. He has served as the Chair of IEEE Northeast Michigan Section, and vice-chair for ASEE North Central Section.
He is a senior member of IEEE, founding advisor for the IEEE Student Chapter at CMU, an elected member of Tau Beta Pi engineering honor society, Omicron Delta Kappa national leadership honor society, and a senior member of IETI.
Brian P. DeJong is an Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering in the School of Engineering and Technology at Central Michigan University. He is a recipient of the university's College of Science & Technology Outstanding Teaching Award. He received a M.S. and Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from Northwestern University with research in robotics. His current research is in mobile robots (spherical, sound-localization), teleoperation (improved interfaces), and engineering education.
Dr. Tolga Kaya currently is an Associate Professor and Director of Engineering in the School of Computer Science and Engineering at Sacred Heart University (SHU). Prior to joining SHU, Dr. Kaya was an Associate Professor at Central Michigan University's S
Dr. Ahmed Abdelgawad received his M.S. and a Ph.D. degree in Computer Engineering from University of Louisiana at Lafayette in 2007 and 2011 and subsequently joined IBM as a Design Aids & Automation Engineering Professional at Semiconductor Research and Development Center. In Fall 2012 he joined Central Michigan University as a Computer Engineering Assistant Professor. In Fall 2017, Dr. Abdelgawad was early promoted as a Computer Engineering Associate Professor. He is a senior member of IEEE. His area of expertise is distributed computing for Wireless Sensor Network (WSN), Internet of Things (IoT), Structural Health Monitoring (SHM), data fusion techniques for WSN, low power embedded system, video processing, digital signal processing, Robotics, RFID, Localization, VLSI, and FPGA design. He has published two books and more than 80 articles in related journals and conferences. Dr. Abdelgawad served as a reviewer for several conferences and journals, including IEEE WF-IoT, IEEE ISCAS, IEEE SAS, IEEE IoT Journal, IEEE Communications Magazine, Springer, Elsevier, IEEE Transactions on VLSI, and IEEE Transactions on I&M. He severed in the technical committees of IEEE ISCAS 2007/8 and IEEE ICIP 2009 conferences. He served in the administration committee of IEEE SiPS 2011. He also served in the organizing committee of ICECS2013 and 2015. Dr. Abdelgawad was the publicity chair in North America of the IEEE WF-IoT 2016/18/19 conferences. He was the finance chair of the IEEE ICASSP 2017. He is the TPC Co-Chair of I3C'17, the TPC Co-Chair of GIoTS 2017, and the technical program chair of IEEE MWSCAS 2018. He is the technical program chair of IEEE WF-IoT 2020. He delivered many tutorials in international conferences including IEEE SOCC, IEEE MWSCAS, IEEE SiPS, and APCCAS. In addition, he taught many short IoT courses in different countries. He was the keynote speaker for many international conferences and conducted many webinars. He is currently the IEEE Northeast Michigan section chair and IEEE SPS Internet of Things (IoT) SIG Member. In addition, Dr. Abdelgawad served as a PI and Co-PI for several funded grants from NSF.
Dr. Ishraq Shabib holds a B.Sc in mechanical engineering from Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology. He received his M.Sc. and Ph.D. both in Mechanical Engineering from Carleton University, Canada. After his Ph.D., he worked for two years as a post-doctoral visiting fellow at CANMET research laboratory of Natural Resources of Canada. In 2011, he joined the department of mechanical engineering at the University of Texas at El Paso as a research assistant professor. Since 2013, he has been serving the school of engineering and technology of Central Michigan University as an assistant professor. His research interest includes deformation of crystalline nanostructures, radiation induced damage of materials, defect structure and property relationship, and atomistic & multiscale modeling.
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