The Research Experience for Teachers in Engineering and Computer Science Site for Sustainable Polymer Engineering Research (RET) at the School of Polymers and High Performance Materials (SPHPM) at the University of Southern Mississippi (USM) provides meaningful summer research experiences for teachers in the laboratories of faculty and provides year-long activities to support implementation of research-based curriculum in the classroom. High school teachers and community college faculty are engaged in a six-week summer research and training program in cutting edge research in sustainable polymer engineering. Integrated with the research experience are education and professional development programs, including team-building workshops, short courses in polymer science, field trips to industry, presentation skills development, and workshops in developing activities for laboratory experiments based on their research. Teachers partner with graduate students, who serve as research mentors during the summer and visiting “scientists in the classroom” during the school year. School year activities include field trips to USM, visits of faculty and graduate students to teacher classrooms, graduate student mentoring of high school science and engineering fair projects, presentation by teachers of workshops at the Mississippi Science Teachers Association (MSTA), and participation by teachers in American Chemical Society (ACS) symposia. The research-based classroom activities are disseminated through the RET website and publication in Teach Engineering.
http://orcid.org/0000-0002-8796-9548
University of Southern Mississippi
[biography]
Dr. Sarah Morgan is a Professor in the School of Polymers and High Performance Materials at The University of Southern Mississippi. She joined The University in November of 2002 after a fourteen year career in industrial R&D in engineering thermoplastics, at GE Plastics locations around the world. Morgan’s current research focuses on polymer surfaces and interfaces, including composites, nanocomposites, and bioinspired materials. She was named a POLY Fellow by the Polymer Chemistry Division of the American Chemical Society in 2016, received The Society of Plastics Engineers Education Award in 2015, and was awarded the Journal of Polymer Science Part B: Polymer Physics Prize for 2010.
Assoc. Director of Recruiting, Outreach & Student Programs
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