PROJECT SUMMARY

The RET Site: Engaging and Enabling Teachers through Advance Manufacturing Research at Clemson University will host 10 high school teachers and community college instructors from South Carolina each year for the 3-year project. Manufacturing is a foundation of economic growth and job creation across the U.S. and is constantly changing with improvements in technology, materials, and design. While this field is a pillar for economic growth within the U.S., manufacturing companies struggle to recruit a technically prepared workforce. When teachers have an opportunity to engage in research, seeing for themselves how knowledge is constructed for a field and understand how the work can influence the larger engineering or scientific community through the stages of research (identification of research questions through to the dissemination of the findings), their impact in the classroom will be increased as they incorporate these experiences into their classroom activities. This research experience for teachers (RET) program is focused on providing experiences for high school teachers and community college instructors to improve their understanding of how research progresses (scientific inquiry) and the field of advanced manufacturing. All teachers will be asked to design and develop classroom activities related to their research projects.

The RET Site Engaging and Enabling Teachers through Advanced Manufacturing Research? at Clemson University seeks to provide transformative manufacturing research experiences for 30 high school teachers and community college instructors from South Carolina. Each teacher will have agency over their own research project related to the development of advanced manufacturing materials or manufacturing techniques. By participating, the teacher’s confidence about manufacturing, knowledge of new manufacturing opportunities, and the research process is anticipated to increase. At the close of the program, each teacher will be able to convey the research process, the manufacturing landscape within the U.S., manufacturing career opportunities and different educational pathways into manufacturing to their students. The goals include: (1) expanding content knowledge of advanced and traditional materials manufacturing for teachers to support integration into new STEM and workforce development teaching and learning materials; (2) engaging teachers in advanced manufacturing research where they take on the role as the lead researcher and increase their understanding of how research leads to knowledge development; (3) providing teachers with professional development (mentoring on curriculum development, etc.) both during their research experience and the following academic year; (4) creating strong communication between the teacher, the RET leadership team and industrial advisory board to provide the teachers with support as they refine their curriculum modules; (5) increasing teacher self-efficacy related to manufacturing content knowledge and inquiry-based teaching; (6) increasing teachers' knowledge of regional career opportunities in advanced manufacturing to inspire their students to consider advanced manufacturing careers. The RET evaluation work will result in increased understandings of regionally-important questions related to workforce development, teacher learning and professional development, and post-secondary educational pathways.