Kentucky Teacher

The National Center for Earth and Space Science Education, the Arthur C. Clarke Institute for Space Education, and NanoRacks announce Mission 5 to the International Space Station – part of the Student Spaceflight Experiments Program (SSEP).

This STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) education opportunity immerses grade 5-14 students in authentic, high visibility research, with the ability to design and propose real experiments to fly in low Earth orbit on the International Space Station.

Each participating school or district will be provided a real microgravity research mini-laboratory capable of supporting a single experiment, and all launch services to fly it to the Space Station in Spring 2014.  A nine week experiment design competition will be held September 9 through November 11, 2013 for student teams to design and formally propose real experiments vying for their community’s reserved mini-lab on Space Station. Content resources for teachers and students support foundational instruction on science in microgravity and experimental design.

SSEP is not designed for an individual class or a small number of students. All interested schools or districts are asked to assess interest with their staff and submit a letter of inquiry by June 30, 2013.

For more information go to ssep@ncesse.org or call contact: 301-395-0770.

Heath Middle School (McCracken County) students Conner Kelly, Hayden Faughn, Garrett Childress and Katelyn Woodard make biosoap at the Emerging Technology Center at West Kentucky Community & Technical College.
Photo by U.S. Department of Energy

By Matthew Tungate
matthew.tungate@education.ky.gov

When an official with the U.S. Department of Energy offered 6th-grade science teacher Brandy Roberts a chance to take her high-achieving students from Heath Middle School (HMS) (McCracken County) to the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant for some mock water sampling experiments, she jumped at the chance.

“This partnership was an opportunity for HMS to really engage our gifted science students, so as a science department we took the idea and ran with it,” Roberts said.

Heath Middle is now in the third year of a partnership with the Department of Energy and other organizations — DOE environmental contractors, the Kentucky Department of Waste Management and the University of Kentucky College of Engineering at Paducah – that exposes students to hands-on problem solving.

Tammy Weitlauf, an 8th-grade science teacher at Heath Middle who helps coordinate the program, said working with scientists and engineers from the various partners fits schools’ mission.

“As a Kentucky school our focus has shifted so much to college- and career-readiness. These are the children that are going to be filling the jobs of the future that may not have even been created yet. So we’re trying to facilitate to stop looking at us for answers and to be problem solvers, because that’s what it’s going to take for the future,” she said. “We’re trying to nurture these students so they will be able to adapt to new situations and to be those future industry leaders.” Read the full story

The deadline has been extended to Feb. 15 for mini-grants to increase girls’ interest in science, engineering and technology.

The Kentucky Girls STEM Collaborative, a statewide initiative to encourage girls to pursue careers in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM), is currently offering mini-grants of up to $1,000. Teachers, community groups and other organizations committed to collaborating, informing and motivating girls are encouraged to apply. Grants are funded in collaboration with the Kentucky National Science Foundation (NSF) Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR) and National Aeronautics and Space Administration Kentucky Space Grant Consortium (NASA KY). Priority will be given to programs reaching out to underrepresented girls in STEM, such as girls with disabilities and girls from diverse populations.

For more information or applications see the National Girls Collaborative Project website http://www.ngcproject.org/mini-grants.

For more information, contact Nancy C. Martin, professor of biochemistry and molecular biology at the University of Louisville, via e-mail at Nancymartin@louisville.edu, or phone (502) 852-5226.

By Tim Thornberry
tim.thornberry@education.ky.gov

Alice Boblitt, the Computer Aided Drafting teacher at the Nelson County Area Technology Center works with student Morgan Ballard on a digital drawing. She said many of her students go on to be quite successful in a variety of careers including engineering. Ballard plans to attend the University of Louisville and study engineering.
Photo by Tim Thornberry

There is a direct connection between the academic classroom and career and technical education (CTE) programs, according to Alice Boblitt, the Computer-Aided Drafting (CAD) instructor at the Nelson County Area Technology Center (ATC).

If her track record of nearly 20 years of teaching is any indication, she is right.

Boblitt has weathered the transition from old-school drafting boards to high-tech computer programs that allow her students to visually and virtually create almost anything they can imagine. She has seen many of her students achieve great success through engineering programs at both the University of Louisville’s J.B. Speed School of Engineering and the University of Kentucky.

Many of her students have also gone the community college route or gained the necessary skills to go directly into the workforce after high school.

All these options make her classroom, and most like it, magnets for students of all backgrounds with one desire: to be Read the full story

The Real World Design Challenge (RWDC) is an annual competition that provides high school students, grades 9-12, the opportunity to work on real world engineering challenges in a team environment.

Each year, student teams will be asked to address a challenge that confronts our nation’s leading industries. Students will utilize professional engineering software to develop their solutions and also will generate presentations that convincingly demonstrate the value of their solutions. The RWDC provides students with opportunities to apply the lessons of the classroom to the technical problems that are being faced in the workplace.

Every teacher who participates in the RWDC gets $1 million in professional engineering software along with training, curriculum materials and access to mentors. Teams of 3-7 high school students use these resources to solve an engineering challenge that is currently faced by industry.

Students first compete in a state level Governor’s Cup. The team with the best design in each state gets an all-expenses-paid trip Read the full story

Kentucky Transportation Cabinet Engineering Scholarship information is available here.

Additional information can be found at the following links:

• KYTC Scholarship Application (PDF)
• KYTC Scholarship Fact Sheet (MS Excel)

For more information, contact Melinda Curless, STEM Initiatives Consultant for the Kentucky Department of Education, at (502)-564-2106 or melinda.curless@education.ky.gov.

The fifth Annual “Soar to New Heights: A STEM-ulating Adventure” summer camp for gifted and talented learners will be June 18-29 at Eastern Kentucky University.

This summer’s camp will offer students an opportunity to explore current topics in science, technology, engineering, mathematics and health in a state-of-the-art instructional and research facility.

The courses, collaboratively designed and implemented by Eastern Kentucky University STEM-H faculty and gifted/talented graduate students, are targeted to students entering grades 4-6 in the fall. The half-day program runs from 8 a.m. to noon daily with a tuition cost of $65 per student.

A brochure detailing the class offerings as well as special events for parents and students will be available soon. For more information, contact Debra Sparks.

NASA blends science, technology, engineering, arts and mathematics (STEAM) using education resources related to current and future missions in this conference, scheduled for June 20-21 in Richmond and June 26-27 in Corbin.

The summer workshops provided by NASA Aerospace Education Services Project and the Southeast/Southcentral Educational Cooperative (SESC) will explore engineering design challenges, problem-based learning activities, distance-learning modules, inquiry-based lessons, literacy across the curriculum and hands-on projects while targeting the Next Generation Standards.

Register online at https://coetech.eku.edu/registration/Online_PD_RegForm.php or call Sarah Evans at (859) 622-8488 for more information.

Lori Ricks

Lori Ricks, an engineering teacher at Trigg County High School, said she works hard on her own leadership skills because she knows that inspiring her students to develop and communicate their visions and show their leadership capabilities are key components in making them successful engineers one day.

“These capabilities include the ability to assess risks and take initiatives, the ability to make logical decisions, a sense of real-world constraints, flexibility in the face of failures and trust in their team,” she said.

Ricks, who has taught engineering at Trigg County High for eight years, has experienced several moments of success in that area with her students.

She also has been honored for her work with them, winning numerous honors from multiple organizations.

After working more than eight years as a marketing and technical service engineer for Trane, Ricks introduced Trigg County High to Project Lead The Way (PLTW) “to open doors that were closed for students exploring careers in engineering,” Ricks said. “I was originally hired to lead public relations activities with the goal of introducing the PLTW program to Trigg County students, ultimately increasing enrollment to 20-25 percent of the high school students in the PLTW classes.”

Ricks soon began teaching the program and has had the number-one test scores in Kentucky for three consecutive years on the PLTW end-of-course assessments, she said. Read the full story

The Kavli Science Video Contest promotes STEM subject learning by challenging students to research, brainstorm and communicate creatively through video.

This year the contest theme is “Save the World through Science and Engineering,” inspired by the National Academy of Engineering’s Grand Challenges.

Students are asked to use their imaginations and investigative skills to tackle global challenges, explore new frontiers and to discover and discuss the inventions that will help mankind and improve life on earth.

Students in grades 6-12 can make a short video that shows how scientific discoveries and inventions can improve lives and change the world, either now or in the future.
The winners receive cash prizes. Entry deadline is March 21. For more information, click here.