Dr. Julia Ross, now in her first semester as Dean of the UMBC College of Engineering and Information Technology, has been awarded a three million dollar grant from the National Science Foundation entitled "Engineering Teacher Pedagogy: Using INSPIRES to Support Integration of Engineering Design in Science and Technology Classrooms." Receiving this award along with Dr. Ross are her co-principal investigators, Dr. Jon Singer and Dr. Chris Rakes, both professors in the UMBC Department of Education.
The funded project will be conducted in partnership with Baltimore County Public Schools (BCPS). High school classes in biology and technology education will incorporate elements of engineering into the sciences by adding open-ended design activities in which the teachers will act as facilitators or coaches The UMBC and BCPS researchers will implement this new teaching program and will assess its effectiveness relative to the level of preparation of the teachers. This will enable teachers of future versions of these classes to be better prepared, and for the students in these future classes to be better served.
On receiving this award, Dr. Ross said "The project is a true partnership. We're bringing together engineering expertise, science and mathematics pedagogical expertise, and community partners in the Baltimore County Public School System to do something very innovative in K-12 education. It's a rigorous research project that none of us could do alone."