(135d) Integrating Chemical Engineering as a Vehicle to Enhance Secondary School Science Instruction

The National Science Education Standards (NSES) support the teaching of engineering and technology principles and design within the traditional science content areas. However, teachers are inadequately prepared to teach these principles of engineering and, most science textbooks lack activities and problems that use engineering principles. The relationship between the subjects of chemical engineering and chemistry provides a vehicle to readily enhance currently available curriculum materials, and create connections between the science used in engineering applications in the real world and standards-based science. It can also provide content that fits the instructional classroom needs of high school science teachers.

The Center for Pre-College Programs at New Jersey Institute of Technology, in collaboration with the Department of Chemical Engineering, has developed outreach and on-campus programs that utilize chemical concepts to introduce secondary school students and teachers to the principles of chemical engineering through their teachers.

This presentation will describe summer programs provided for students designed to provide students with experiences in engineering, science and mathematics, while giving them the motivation and confidence to pursue post-secondary careers in engineering.

Summer institutes, and hands-on workshops, are designed to familiarize the teachers with the appropriate chemical engineering principles and relate these chemical engineering principles to the science concepts that are familiar to the teachers. Approaches for integrating these principles into their science instruction are also explored.