2026 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 2025 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 second year of our RET, 11 science and math teachers from middle schools in 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, 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 survey and focus group feedback collected at the end of the program, teachers indicated positive feedback for the RET program, for their own feelings of instructional efficacy and for their knowledge of new engineering and computer science concepts. This work will present the aspects of the program that contributed most to teachers positive and negative feelings of the RET and how their views of science and engineering were changed through this process. This is expected to support other engineering educators who are planning to launch a RET site or are interesting in possible revisions for an existing site.