Nifty Teaching
For about 300 middle schools students in western Maryland, a recent science class masqueraded as a paper-airplane competition. Anne Spence, an assistant professor of mechanical engineering at UMBC, divided groups of students at St. John Regional Catholic School into teams to design single-sheet planes, awarding points to those whose models reliably flew the farthest.
At Huntingtown High School in southern Maryland’s Calvert County, students in advanced placement and honors chemistry classes also got a fresh perspective on science when Mark Perks, a senior lecturer in UMBC’s Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, handed them molecular model kits to demonstrate how identical groups of atoms can take on radically different structures.
The lessons were meant to be fun, but they were also part of a broad effort to ignite scientific interest in local schools as part of the USA Science and Engineering Festival. Spence and Perks were selected to be part of the “Nifty Fifty,” a group of slightly more than 50 leading educators and researchers from across the country.
Other members of the Nifty Fifty included Francis Collins, Director of the National Institutes of Health, and Tony Fauci, Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID).
“It was a real honor to be a part of the Nifty Fifty and to spend a day with Maryland high school students,” Perks said. “There’s such a need in this country for more scientists — programs like this one can provide the necessary spark to put someone on that path.”
The festival concluded with an expo on the National Mall Oct. 23-24.
The work getting young people interested in science and engineering continues. Spence is the director of the state’s Project Lead the Way affiliate, which has provided an engineering curriculum in more than 100 Maryland schools. Spence said the airplane activity she recently taught at St. John Regional Catholic School in Frederick is just an example of the kind of hands-on lesson that can make science and engineering meaningful to students.
“So many kids get the mistaken idea that studying science and engineering has to be boring and difficult,” she said. “When they see they can solve real problems and make new things, many students start mastering the tricky stuff, almost by accident.”
11/5/10
