High School Science Teachers to Demonstrate Engineering Projects April 8, Fostered by Pitt NSF-Funded Project
Teachers representing Pittsburgh Public, Woodland Hills, Wilkinsburg, Steel Valley, and McKeesport school districts will display projects on the environment, prosthetics, and nuclear energy
Eight area high
school science teachers—representing the Pittsburgh Public, Woodland Hills,
Wilkinsburg, Steel Valley, and McKeesport school districts—will present
engineering design projects at 5 p.m. April 8 on the ninth floor of the
University of Pittsburgh’s Learning Research and Development Center (LRDC),
3939 O’Hara St., Oakland.
Under the guidance of Howard Kuhn, adjunct professor in the Pitt Swanson School
of Engineering’s Department of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Sciences,
the teachers devised three projects—Vibration Mitigation in a Nuclear Generator
Steam Line, Device for Assistance in Donning a Prosthetic Leg, and Design of a
Portable Pathogen Detection Unit—for Westinghouse Electric and Children’s
Hospital of Pittsburgh of UPMC.
The project were conducted as part of a National Science Foundation (NSF) grant
titled “Connecting Research and Teaching Through Product Realization: The
Pittsburgh Quality of Life RET Site.” Principal investigators on the NSF
project are Christian Schunn, a Pitt associate professor of psychology and
research scientist at LRDC; Amy Landis, assistant professor of civil and
environmental engineering in Pitt’s Swanson School of Engineering; and Sondra
Balouris, an instructor in Pitt’s School of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences.
This summer, the teachers will use this research experience when they work at
LRDC on creating and adapting curricular modules that they will employ in their
own science classes beginning in fall 2009. The goal of the project is to
expose high school students to engineering and inspire a broader cross-section
of students to pursue engineering careers. Now at the end of its first year,
this grant builds upon a similar three-year NSF grant program that was recently
completed and had exposed thousands of local high school students to
engineering design.
There is always newsworthy research and events happening in the Swanson School of Engineering.
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