2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

The National Science Foundation (NSF) Research Experiences for Teachers (RET) program supports summer research experiences for K-14 educators to enhance their scientific disciplinary knowledge in engineering or computer science and translate their research experiences into classroom activities and curricula to broaden their students’ awareness of engineering education and career pathways.

In 2024 an RET site (funded by the NSF) launched at the University of Alabama with a common theme of technologies and applications of sensing systems for physiological and environmental monitoring. This theme was selected because knowledge of how to measure physical quantities of materials, devices, tissues, and the environment is critical to answering research questions across all engineering domains. This then leads to a strong alignment of projects with national and state goals of integrating engineering design and engineering design practices within the context of science content creation.

In the first iteration of our RET, 11 science and math teachers from middle schools in west Alabama participated in research and professional development workshops over 7-weeks. During each week teachers engaged in structured engineering, sensors/programming, and education/curriculum workshops in addition to their faculty directed research. The engineering workshops highlighted the different disciplines and career-paths across engineering and computer science. The sensors/programming workshops guided teachers through using the Arduino Uno platform to measure physical quantities (light, temperature, humidity, sound, and acceleration). The education/curriculum workshop guided teachers through linking their research to education standards and exploring resources available to help teach engineering content in their classrooms. At the end of the 7-weeks the program culminated in a poster symposium with teachers presenting the results of their research to faculty, engineering students, and other professionals on campus.

Based on focus group feedback collected at the end of the program, teachers enjoyed the challenge of learning to do a research project and learned skills they could bring into their classrooms to increase student engagement. However, they noted that more support during the summer to help them develop their curriculum would be useful and help them transition their research to their classrooms. This work will outline the lessons learned from running our site and workshops during Year 1 and outline the planned revisions for Year 2 to address teachers focus group feedback to improve their research experiences and transitioning their work to their classrooms. These lessons and details are expected to support other engineering educators who are planning to launch a RET site or are interesting in possible revisions for an existing site.