Mehraeen partners with Chicago schools to incorporate computational modeling into high school curricula
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To raise awareness of computational modeling and simulation (CMS) among high school students, Chemical Engineering Department Assistant Professor Shafigh Mehraeen is partnering with Computer Science Assistant Professor Joseph Michaelis and Chicago public and private school teachers to develop innovative and technologically grounded lesson plans and classroom activities in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) using CMS tools.
“The overarching goal is to encourage high school students to come to STEM fields,” Mehraeen said. “If students are supposed to learn those topics and skills in college after they chose a field to study other than STEM, it might be too late or difficult for them to change majors to STEM or get enough exposure to STEM-related activities.”
He noted that previous research has shown that public schools are currently unrepresented in STEM education, and they want to encourage high school students around the Chicago area to consider that path. In doing so, this would create a good starting point for their research.
Mehraeen recently received a grant for $600,000 from the National Science Foundation to provide research experience for teachers. He proposed strategies to bring modeling and simulation to science education at the high school level and the best way to do this is to change the curriculum. However, because Mehraeen and his team are not familiar with the high school curriculum, they brought in teachers to work with as they know how their students learn. So, the teachers plan to expose their students to the type of research the UIC team does.
Mehraeen said that one of the main components of engineering, science, and industry is CMS. These topics can be used to encourage high school students to choose STEM fields if they are exposed to them before college. One way to do this is to bring these topics to the high school curricula.
Mehraeen added engineering and Science are challenging fields, and they require a lot of effort, talent, and skills; so, it’s best to start early before students enter college.
He said the UIC team plans to advertise to more than 100 public and private high schools in the Chicagoland area to recruit around 30 or so teachers over the course of the next three years. The UIC team will inform other teachers about their research findings via CPS, and the project website after it is accomplished.
Teachers would then integrate Mehraeen and his team’s knowledge into their curriculum.
Michaelis will also help teachers translate the UIC team’s research into their classrooms. Other UIC professors working on this project include Civil, Materials, and Environmental Engineering Assistant Professor Abokifa, Mechanical and Industrial Engineering Associate Professor Hamed Hatami-Marbini, and Chemistry Professors Petr Král and Donald Wink.
Mehraeen teamed with the UIC Learning Sciences Research Institute to help translate the engineering knowledge from the faculty into the curricula. LSRI is an institute in collaboration with the Colleges of Education, Engineering, and Liberal Arts and Sciences.