CIESE Awarded 3-Year, $1.2M NSF ITEST Grant

HOBOKEN , N.J. — The Center for Innovation in Engineering and Science Education (CIESE) at Stevens Institute of Technology has been awarded a three-year, $1.2 million Information Technology Experiences for Students and Teachers (ITEST) grant from the National Science Foundation, to implement pre-engineering and information-technology experiences in courses and summer programs with teachers and students from schools throughout New Jersey .

The BUILD IT program utilizes LEGO robotics and programming in an underwater environment as the vehicle to introduce engineering design and problem solving and programming. An interdisciplinary project team, including Principal Investigator and CIESE Director Beth McGrath, Co-Principal Investigators Liesl Hotaling and Victor Lawrence, and Research Associate Professor Rustam Stolkin, will lead the Stevens BUILD IT project.

“The NSF ITEST program is designed to increase student interest and proficiency in IT and to guide more students into advanced IT study and careers,” said McGrath. “BUILD IT will extend the work done through previous underwater robotics projects with undergraduates and high school students at Stevens to impact significantly the pool and capabilities of students in New Jersey who will go on to study IT-related fields and pursue careers in a variety of IT-based industries.”

The project will impact 72 teachers and 2,625 students from 36 diverse middle and high schools throughout New Jersey with intensive, three-week, in-class IT experiences in the design, construction, and programming of underwater robotic vehicles.

Since 1988, CIESE programs and activities have reached more than 20,000 educators worldwide through grants and contracts totaling more than $25 million. CIESE has received accolades from the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the National Science Teachers Association, and others. CIESE’s projects were selected as one of only six technology demonstrations in the category “Improving Instruction to Meet High Standards,” at the 2001 National Education Summit.

In 1993, CIESE received one of the nation’s first grants ($2.9 million from the National Science Foundation Networking Infrastructure in Education Program) to explore Internet use in K-12 science education. This program reached approximately 3,000 teachers from nearly 700 schools in New Jersey . With support from Verizon Communications, CIESE is training 2,000 teachers throughout New Jersey in elementary, middle, and high school engineering and technology education curricula.

For more about CIESE, please visit ciese.org

About Stevens Institute of Technology

Founded in 1870, Stevens Institute of Technology is one of the leading technological universities in the world dedicated to learning and research. Through its broad-based curricula, nurturing of creative inventiveness, and cross disciplinary research, the Institute is at the forefront of global challenges in engineering, science, and technology management. Partnerships and collaboration between, and among, business, industry, government and other universities contribute to the enriched environment of the Institute. A new model for technology commercialization in academe, known as Technogenesis®, involves external partners in launching business enterprises to create broad opportunities and shared value.

Stevens offers baccalaureates, master’s and doctoral degrees in engineering, science, computer science and management, in addition to a baccalaureate degree in the humanities and liberal arts, and in business and technology. The university has a total enrollment of 2,040 undergraduate and 3,085 graduate students, and a worldwide online enrollment of 2,250, with a full-time tenured/tenure-track faculty of 140 and more than 200 full-time special faculty. Stevens’ graduate programs have attracted international participation from China, India, Southeast Asia, Europe and Latin America. Additional information may be obtained from its web page at www.stevens.edu.  

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