Environmental Technology Curriculum Enrichment

This project aims to enhance communication between the community college, university, high schools, industry, and local government in Tucson, Arizona through collaborative multi-level internships, curriculum development and summer high school math and science teacher conferences. Curriculum development includes creation of a "Design for the Environment" general education course for freshman university students and entering technician students. This course is also being offered in local high schools for community college or university credit through co-enrollment programs. It is available on the WEB. A second new course is being developed entitled a "Capstone Technician" course in which community college students work on team laboratory projects, are mentored by local industry, and perform classroom activities that stress ethics and safety. Industrial internships are being offered to teams of engineering and technician students in local industries such as Tucson Electric Power and Raytheon, where they work on "real world" projects. High school teachers shadow and participate in these internships during a three-week institute to learn about current environmental issues. In addition, the high school teachers are developing new science and math modules that can be incorporated into existing math and science courses. These fresh ideas vitalize the teachers and interest students in environmental science and engineering. Furthermore, the student intern teams are visiting the high school classrooms to follow up with the teachers and to perform hands on demonstrations with high school students. The new high school materials are being disseminated locally at a three-day high school teacher conference. The community college and university course materials are being disseminated via CD-ROM and video at national meetings and via the WEB. Program evaluation is occurring internally by the evaluation group at the University of Arizona, and externally by NSF sponsored groups such as Project MTS at Western Michigan University.