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Tennessee State University
Increasing the Participation of African Americans and Native Americans in Geosciences through an Innovative Partnership between an HBCU and a Tribal College
Increasing the Participation of Women and African Americans in Biomedical Engineering through a Synergistic and Innovative Partnership with the VaNTH ERC
Preparing Health Science Teachers For The New Standards In Forensic Science And Biomedical Applications
The Engineers of Tomorrow (EOT) Program at TSU
Institute for Understanding Biological Systems: Grants for K-12 Education
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Increasing the Participation of African Americans and Native Americans in Geosciences through an Innovative Partnership between an HBCU and a Tribal College
Abstract
The GeoRobotic Analytical Sampling Project (GRASP) brings together a unique Geoscience Educational collaboration focused on creating an engaging, rigorous, and pedagogically sound geoscience curriculum for historically underrepresented students, teachers and parents. The collaboration involves a Historically Black University (Tennessee State University), a Tribal College (Oglala Lakota College) and a university with world-class geoscientists and educators (Arizona State University). GRASP will involve geoscience faculty members, sophisticated geoscience instrumentation, K- 12 educational programs, teacher professional development, and scientists on the Mars Rover Team.
Both TSU and OLC host successful Science, Engineering, Mathematics and Aerospace Academy (SEMAA) programs. The National SEMAA Program is currently exploring new possibilities for a high school curriculum that will motivate students in grades 9-12. ASU, in partnership with TSU and OLC, will create the GRASP curriculum, train high school teachers who will implement the activities in the SEMAA program at these sites. Specifically, teams of geo scientists and educators will work with teachers, high-school students and college students over two years to design and conduct a geoscience robotic exploration of the rolling hills of Tennessee and the badlands of South Dakota using authentic research investigations from the Mars Student Imaging Project.
Dragonfly Enterprises provides web design, web based data management for tracking participation, and oversees the evaluation of GRASP.
Client
Tennessee State University
Institute for Understanding Biological Systems
Director, Dr. Todd Gary
tgary@coe.tsuniv.edu
http://coe.tsuniv.edu/Research.htm
Funding Agency
National Science Foundation
Timeline
September 1, 2006 to August 31, 2008
Partners
Tennessee State University: Center of Excellence in Information Systems
Oglala Lakota College Tribal College
Arizona State University
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Increasing the Participation of Women and African Americans in Biomedical Engineering through a Synergistic and Innovative Partnership with the VaNTH ERC
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Abstract
The Tennessee State University (TSU) CREST Center has an integrated partnership with Vanderbilt University's VaNTH Engineering Research Center (ERC) to design research-based educational materials for a TSU sponsored after school program. The curriculum materials will increase student knowledge of biomedical engineering applications related to space exploration and increase interest in related careers. The TSU CREST Center, working with the NASA Science, Engineering, Mathematics, and Aerospace Academy (SEMAA), is a place where high school students can engage in challenging inquiry and problem solving in engineering areas. The partnership with the VaNTH ERC will expand and strengthen that infrastructure in the biomedical engineering field. The curriculum is currently being field-tested in the SEMAA program at TSU. Dragonfly Enterprises assists with the curriculum development and the project evaluation for this NSF grant.
Funding Agency
National Science Foundation
Timeline
2005 to 2007
Partners
Tennessee State University (TSU) CREST Center
Vanderbilt University's VaNTH Engineering Research Center (ERC)
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Preparing Health Science Teachers For The New Standards In Forensic Science And Biomedical Applications
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Abstract
In January 2005, the Tennessee Department of Education approved new curriculum standards for two new health science courses: Forensic Science and Biomedical Research Applications. Health science teachers are required to receive relevant training in content, methods, and use of equipment required to teach these courses. This project is designed to provide the required training for teachers and will use the training-of-the-trainer model to reach additional teachers. At the end of this project, teachers who have participated will have the laboratory equipment, the skills required to properly use this equipment, and teach these new courses. Dragonfly Enterprises provides for web-based tracking of participation, and supervises the evaluation of this teacher professional development program.
Funding Agency
The Tennessee State Department of Education division of Career and Technical Education funded this project for a secondary teacher Summer Institute in 2006.
Timeline
2006
Partners
Tennessee State University Center of Excellence Information Systems
Tennessee State Department of Education Division of Career and Technical Education
Biotechnology Program at Nashville State Technical Community College
Williamson Works
Williamson County Schools
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The Engineers of Tomorrow (EOT) Program at TSU
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The EOT program is part of SEMAA and is designed to create nationally competitive teams of middle and high school students in engineering. These teams consist of students in the SECME/TSU SEMAA program. The TSU SEMAA team competed in the FIRST Robotics Competition in Atlanta GA in March 2006 ( www.usfirst.org ) funded by a grant from Marshal Space Flight Center. TSU SEMAA students also competed in the national Mousetrap Car Competitions sponsored by SECME in Florida in July of 2006.
Funding Agency
Marshall Space Flight Center
NASA Headquarters
Timeline
2005 to 2007
Partners
TSU SEMAA Program
NASA Marshall Space Flight Center
Tennessee Space Grant Consortium
Report
Tracy Cummings, a doctoral student at Vanderbilt University, completed an evaluation of the Engineers of Tomorrow project in April 2006 when she was a student at TSU. She won first place in a student research competition. Mrs. Butler of DFE was her mentor in this project. Ms. Cummings based her evaluation on a research study about First Robotics national competitions founded by Dean Kamen in 1989 to inspire an appreciation of science and technology in young people, their schools, and communities. For example, research on participants in FIRST Robotics national competitions conducted by Brandeis University found that participants were twice as likely to major in science or engineering than the comparison students (55% vs. 28%). Follow up studies show that FIRST participants primarily from urban and low income schools were significantly more likely to attend college full-time and pursue careers in science and engineering fields.
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