Ohio State students share their passion for engineering with next generation
The fourteen undergraduates are part of Translating Engineering Research to K-8 (TEK8), a unique program at Ohio State that enables engineering undergraduates to transform their summer research intern experience into design challenges that teach elementary and middle school students a little bit about engineering.
“The motivation behind TEK8 involves the challenge that engineering faces with encouraging and preparing the next generation of students,” said Howard Greene, director of K-12 outreach for the College of Engineering. “We also want to encourage ambassador skills in our own undergraduate engineering students.”
The undergraduates first spent the summer working with an Ohio State engineering faculty member during a paid internship researching various topics from polymers to cancer research.
“The best design comes out of a compelling need for something and the research context is a really rich environment for design,” said Greene. “Creating design challenges centered around real-life problems gives a societal tie in to make the challenges more engaging.”
Now in its fourth year, the program also includes central Ohio middle and high school teachers. This year for the first time, the three enrolled teachers also participated in summer research projects together with the undergraduates in order to learn more about the design process and how to incorporate fundamentals of engineering into their own classrooms.
The participants then enrolled in an autumn course that teaches them how to create design challenges inspired by their research experiences that are age-appropriate, low-cost and can be led by someone with no technical background. Their work is put to the test in the classrooms of KIPP Columbus during a six-week after-school program where they administer their design challenges to KIPP students in the third through eighth grades.
“A lot of my high school students don’t know what engineering is about and what’s involved,” said Briana Richardson, a participating high school teacher from Washington Courthouse. “Giving that information to younger kids, while they have the imagination to want to engage with it and have that to look forward to, is important.”
Devon Allen, a fifth-year materials science and engineering major, found the opportunity to teach kids who might not otherwise learn about engineering appealing.
“My favorite part is probably in the middle of the design challenge,” he said. “You can see the kids actually getting the grasp of a concept or a term that you’ve taught them and it clicks and they get excited about it.”
In the future years, the program plans to integrate more teachers into the design challenge teams in order to spread the enthusiasm for engineering even further.
by Emily Lehmkuhl, College of Engineering student communications assistant
