Introducing engineering in middle schools

Abstract

The Engineering Your Future program is a collaborative effort amongst IBM, the Colorado School of Mines (CSM), and the Denver Public School system (DPS). As part of this project, an IBM researcher and undergraduate students from CSM visit 25 middle school science classes (∼600 students) on a monthly basis to expose the students to various scientific, mathematical, and engineering concepts through hands-on investigations. Each teaching module is designed to engage students in interesting and relevant experiments which demonstrate scientific or engineering concepts that reinforce or enhance the standard curriculum. Repetitive interventions with each class are used to develop relationships between the middle school students, the outreach instructor, and undergraduate student "role models". The four participating Denver middle schools all have high minority (>90%) low-income (>70%) student populations that have demonstrated poor performance on state standardized tests of mathematics and science.