The WICAT Research Experiences for Teachers program in U.Va.’s Engineering School brings middle school teachers to Grounds for six weeks during the summer so that they can become acquainted with some of the most fascinating research happening at U.Va. — and bring what they learn back to their students in the classroom.
Teachers are selected through an application process and, once chosen, are involved in active research, working alongside faculty and graduate students. At the conclusion of the program, the teachers will translate their research experiences into authentic, applied curricular material for use in their own classrooms during the following school year.
The teachers will be doing hands-on, experimental testing of the theoretical work supporting the research, i.e. building and testing robots (with Legos Mindstorms), using the robots to test different scenarios, etc. The teachers will keep research notebooks detailing their work and will prepare a final document summarizing their research and how they plan to translate their experiences into material for their own classroom.
The program is funded by the National Science Foundation.
For more information, contact Reid Bailey in the Department of Systems and Information Engineering at rrbailey@virginia.edu or visit RET at www.nsf.gov/pubs/2003/nsf03554/nsf03554.htm.
