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Project Details
Created:
07/08/2008
Project Title:
Engineering Outreach through Robotics in Inner City Education
Project Category:
Education
Project Status:
Proposal
CASE Competition
CASE Competition:
ServiceBook Monthly - July 2008
Grant Winner
Project Snapshot
Problem: Creating a program to help expose inner-city school children to the fields of engineering, science, technology, and mathematics
Solution: Program will utilize Lego Mindstorms NXT to demonstrate to inner-city students the practical side of math and science through engineering. This project will also host a daily camp for interested students and create a teaching program to allow the older students to provide instruction for their younger peers.
Student Information
College or University:
University of Dayton
State:
Ohio
Student Name:
Douglas W. Smith
Year in College:
Senior
Major:
Mechanical Engineering
Faculty Advisor
Advisor Name:
Dr. Margaret Pinnell
Community Partner
Partner Name:
The Salvation Army, Dayton Central Corps
Student and Community
What societal problem does your project solve?
Higher education resources in the City of Dayton are plentiful with community, state, and private colleges surrounding an underprivileged and floundering public school system. Through the Robotics Program I am proposing, students will be exposed to values of engineering and its related STEM fields. Students in and around the Old North Dayton and McCook Field neighborhoods that surround the school are not typically exposed to engineering as a career option. Lacking resources both within the school system and within economically challenged family situations are barriers to academic the derivative of which is no exposure to STEM education. The need for students who pursue careers in the STEM fields is growing in the Dayton area. A recent article on the University of Dayton’s (UD) website states that by 2011 the DOD anticipates 1,200 new jobs in STEM fields in the Dayton area. (http://www.udayton.edu/News/Article/?contentId=14448) By exposing the students to engineering we hope to inspire them to further their education to a post secondary level in a STEM field. In turn, these students will return to (or remain in) Dayton and benefit their communities both economically and educationally. The students will also come into contact with several positive male, female and minority role models who will be leading the program. Inner city students often lack access to positive, professional role models. The community will benefit by furthering developing strong ties already established between UD and Kiser, strengthened between the two communities who have much to learn from one another.What would be the measurable outcomes of the partnership that you propose to create between the community and your educational institution?
The results we expect to achieve are several. The ultimate goal for this project is to introduce these students to engineering and the opportunities an engineering education can provide them. We therefore expect them to receive exposure to these fields and the power of the education they provide both socially, economically and culturally. We expect to see students express more interest in science and math. We also expect to have the students be exposed to students who are pursuing careers in these fields and more generally are pursuing post-secondary educational opportunities.How would you, with the support of your faculty advisor on campus and some one from the community, work together around this specified community issue?
This project’s activities are broken down into three phases. The first stage will occur during the first quarter of the DPS school year. During this phase we will be in the classroom on a bi-weekly basis for 2-3 hours working with ALL the students in the split 7-8 class. We will be using Lego Mindstorms NXT to show them practical side of math and science through engineering. We will be incorporating the Ohio Achievement Standards into our lessons. The second stage will occur during DPS’s intersession break. Intersession a two week break that occurs after the first quarter ends on the 20th of October. During these two weeks we will be hosting a daily camp for students interested in engineering from across the DPS. The introductory engineering classes will be brought into facilitate different engineering activities which may or may not be related to the robotics. The third phase involves having the students who show greater interest in the robotics learning more robotics and then teaching their younger peers in the school. During this phase we will be working not only to get younger students interested in engineering but to build community and role models amongst the middle school and younger students.How would you envision sharing power and decision making in the partnership? In other words, instead of doing something for the community how would you do something with the community?
Collaboration between community partners and stakeholders has been at the heart of this project from the beginning. My connection to Kiser School was fostered by a community initiative to move toward a Neighborhood School Model (challenging following 25 years of court-ordered busing for racial balance in public education). Volunteers from the local community and local universities have been the driving force of change in the school and larger community. A project leader who works for a collaborative team made up of Kiser School, The Salvation Army, The University of Dayton, and numerous private partners coordinates programs and student activities to enrich their educational experiences. I have been working side by side with her finding and applying for grants. We have also jointly built relationships and approached administration about the support, use and guidance of the principal, teachers, and students at the school. The partner will be the interface on a day to day basis with the school faculty and our class. The community partner will serve an advisory role, working with us to understand the inner-city educational environment. All decisions to date and those to follow will be made with the consultation and approval of the community partner. The dialogue and thoughtful construction of potential challenges provided by our partner are invaluable to our decision making process.How would you collect data on what the project was doing and use it in the decision making process?
We will use data from research (published and preliminary findings by our advising professor) to better understand what challenges we will face. Demographic data of the school we will be working in will give us a better idea of where these students come from, both geographically and socio-economically. This will allow for decisions to be made with the understanding of the students in mind at all times. It is crucial for us to understand these factors in an inner-city environment. Data will also allow us to find out what others have done in the past with STEM projects and build off their successes and try to avoid their failures. Building with an already established framework from data will only allow the implementation of the project to run more smoothly.What would be the project activities? Give examples of how the strengths already existing in the community will be acknowledged, built upon, and enhanced in the partnership to solve the problem.
The Neighborhood School initiative at Kiser School is being looked to in the local neighborhoods and larger city structure as a possible model for education as we move into the third year of collaboration between community partners and public schools. The movement and public interest in collaborative school environments will be further enhanced and highlighted through this project. Local news media have already become involved and intend to run several feature stories about this innovative project. Community service is incorporated in the second phase of the project as the middle school students who want to continue doing robotics will teach the younger students in the school about robotics and engineering. This works well with the established peer teaching-learning strength in the Kiser community. It will help to establish positive academic and social role models with in the community for the younger students.What obstacles or challenges might you encounter in implementing your project, and how would you address them?
Anytime a project involves complex public systems, there are considerable challenges that might occur. We believe we have overcome several challenges with the structure we have prepared for this project by aligning academic standards of Kiser School with the mission and goals of the University of Dayton. Both of these align with The Salvation Army to do the most good and provide high-quality experiences for children to excel in education. Since we have avoided some of the systemic problems with our planned structure, our primary concern is financial. Since the Lego robot kits for a single classroom cost upwards of $4,000 (to have 8 teams of four for 32 students (max allowed by DPS) our primary concern is being equipped to meet the needs of a single classroom.The University of Dayton and Salvation Army have contributed a combined total of $3,000 toward this project, but that still leaves us about $1,000 short of our goal. We also would like enough funding to provide some supplemental learning activities for participants. If we cannot come up with the necessary funds we will have to cut back on some of the supplemental activities so that we can do other engineering related projects. If we are unable to come up with the remaining funds through grants, we have two strategies to assure the success of this program. The first is to complete some in-school and in-neighborhood fundraising completed by the participating students. Our second option is to limit the number of participants and purchase as many kits as possible with the funding we have already raised.
Recruiting Volunteers:
Would you recruit additional student volunteers? If so, how?
Enlisting Partners:
Do you envision enlisting businesses, or other organizations, etc., to help; if so, how?
How would the award money be used here?
If your project idea is an innovation of an existing
program, what are its current funding sources?
The Lego Mindstorms kit costs $3,495, we intend to use the majority of the grant money to complete the purchase of this kit. (As noted above, some funding has been provided by UD and The Salvation Army $3,000)
Intersession Camp:
$295 Food Purchases. All students who attend Kiser are on Ohio’s Free Lunch Program. Providing lunch for these students is critical for their participation and well-being.
$200 Camp Activities Purchases. The camp will include some supplemental science and engineering lessons that are both fun and creative. Each class that gets involved will have a small faculty pool to purchase supplies (between $50 and $75 per project).
What do you anticipate learning from engaging in the service project?
This project will support many basic engineering lessons which we have learned over our four years in the classroom. It will also be an excellent opportunity to learn program and project management skills which are highly necessary to be a competent engineer. This project will also support the social justice teachings which are stressed in many courses at the University, in and outside of the School of Engineering. This project will reinforce the technical skills as we will learn more engineering through teaching it to younger studentsIf the above questions have not enabled you to convey the essence and value of your project’s impact, use this space to supplement your answers.
Note from the student project leader:My name is Doug Smith and I have had the pleasure of working with students at Kiser over the last year. Saying these students changed my life may seem over-the-top or exaggerated, however, working with these students has greatly changed my outlook on public education and helped me understand how blessed I really am for the educational opportunities I was provided as a child by my home jurisdiction’s public schools. UD has taught me many lessons in engineering, but perhaps the more fundamental lesson it taught me was the importance of giving back. This is my opportunity to positively impact youth in a way that is educational as well as a key piece in social development. Without the positive role models in my life, I’m not sure I’d be prepared to graduate from UD this December. Please help me provide the opportunity to inspire and support students who really need a positive and rewarding educational challenge. There are future engineers and scientists among them, they just don’t see it in themselves yet.
Please submit an abstract (clear summary) of your proposed project idea.
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