Tufts has collaborated with the Massachusetts State Board of Education to develop a curriculum that teaches practical uses of math and science through engineering. The Board announced in December that it will be incorporating an engineering curriculum into grades K-12, and Tufts students have been working in local schools to help with its implementation.
The requirement marks a major victory for Tufts' Center for Engineering Educational Outreach (CEEO), which has been working for 15 years to bring practical uses of science and technology into the classroom. This is also the first time in over a century that the state curriculum has annexed a new discipline, according to Engineering School Dean Ioannis Miaoulis.
Just as students are required to learn general world knowledge, such as Christopher Columbus' discovery of the new world or the characteristics of plant and animal cells, they will now have to learn engineering concepts like finding solutions to human needs.
"People know a lot more about how volcanoes work than they know about how computers work, and you use a computer more often than you use a volcano," said Miaoulis, who spearheaded the initiative.
The initiative may also help raise math scores on standardized tests, as engineering forces students to blend math and science skills into problem-solving exercises.
"Few current high school graduates really understand what engineering is," CEEO Director Martha Cyr said. "Even incoming engineers at Tufts have difficulty defining engineering. Yet surprisingly, engineering is one of the most common pastimes of the average elementary school student. They love to design, create, build, and automate."
At each stage of the education process, students will focus on a different aspect of engineering. In grade school, students will be presented with projects designed to be fun while incorporating engineering skills, such as building sand castles or constructing LEGOs. For example, they would be asked to design an outdoor house for a pet rabbit, and they would have to consider such factors as insulating the house against cold temperatures, along with architecture and structure.
As students enter middle-school grades, they will focus more on the applications of engineering, such as transportation, construction, manufacturing, communication, and bioengineering - important areas in a technologically dominated world
High school students will integrate many traditional math and science concepts into an engineering thought process that will have been developing since kindergarten. By the time students enter college, they will have more competent engineering skills and a greater ability to think three-dimensionally.
Although the new curriculum has many potential benefits, implementing it statewide may be difficult for financial reasons. Technical education instructors will need to be trained and hired for middle-school students, and teams of engineers will be needed to teach the more advanced classes at the high school level. Tufts will be heavily involved in preparing these instructors and in providing support for the curriculum.
Details about the statewide implementation of the program are still being worked out, but some individual schools have already started to incorporate engineering into their curriculums. The Nashoba school district has been working with Tufts to do this, and five undergraduates and five graduates participate in this effort.
"I think that there is a real commitment to the idea that the best way to teach is to engage children in meaningful learning - to get kids who may like science and math, or who may hate it, beyond memorizing facts or formulas," graduate student Lacey Prouty said.
Prouty said that although the schedule is hectic and draining, the collaboration between Tufts and the Nashoba schools benefits students from both places. Prouty, who is pursuing masters degrees in engineering and education, said that working with children has taught her a great deal.
"The primary thing that I've learned is that regardless of the complexity of theory, there is a real, hands-on way to explain it to others," she said. "Subjects and concepts can be broken down and made 'digestible' on any level, to anyone."
Graduate student Emily Ryan is involved in the research end of the initiative, and designs activities for the students that will maintain their interest while teaching them engineering. "There are so many activities for children that it is easy to find different ones," she said. "But once you find an interesting activity, you have to make sure it somehow fulfills a standard and is doable for the children."
Tufts students' work in Nashoba is funded by a $1 million grant from the National Science Foundation and have worked with approximately 500 children so far.
Miaoulis said that the program has brought a great deal of prestige to Tufts and that he receives dozens of calls a day from deans of other colleges asking how it was created.
"It's great for Tufts. Although K-12 outreach is by no means the biggest thing we do, it is so rewarding to be able to teach children all over the country," he said. "[As a leading school in engineering], we have an obligation to be a major contributor."
