People, ideas, and discoveries that impact North Carolina and the world

April 2008

The New Face of Science and Engineering

By David Hunt

By David Hunt  

Students crowd around a table at the front of a third grade classroom at Bugg Elementary School in Raleigh to take part in a scientific experiment that will further their knowledge of key mathematical concepts. Their tools are simple, if unconventional. On the table in front of each student is a disposable diaper, a turkey baster and a large bowl filled with a mysterious yellow liquid.

A teacher instructs the students to guess how much liquid a diaper will hold. Then, using their turkey basters, the students begin filling up the diapers with the yellow liquid, testing their hypotheses, ounce by ounce.

It's a way of learning about units of measure, liquid volume, absorbency and – in a larger sense – the scientific method itself. And what 8-year-old can resist giggling at the idea – however remote – that the yellow liquid is...well, you know.

Family Math Night
Student Moses Wright uses his skill in math and his competitive spirit to win a multiplication game during Family Math Night.

This isn't a typical school day at Bugg Elementary, it's an event called Family Math Night that introduces students and their parents to dozens of hands-on exercises that make learning math a little easier – and a lot more fun – than it used to be.

Family Math Night is just one component of a program called RAMP UP that brings university students into classrooms throughout Wake County for 10 hours a week to introduce fresh ideas and excitement into the teaching of math and science. The program, funded by grants from the GE Foundation and the National Science Foundation's GK-12 program, was developed by professors at North Carolina State University and Shaw University.

Through the program, about 40 graduate and undergraduate students majoring in engineering, math, science and education work with public school teachers in 50 classrooms to show students in grades 3 through 12 how to apply math to real-world situations.

"I am an engineer. I hate math, I love science. I was fortunate enough to have had a teacher that showed me that to be good at science, you had to be good at math. He showed me the relevance," says project director Liz Parry, who works out of the K-12 Outreach office in the College of Engineering at NC State.

It's a lesson she's worked hard to incorporate into RAMP UP. Relevance, she says, is the cornerstone of the program.

Ramp Up stands for "Recognizing Accelerated Math Potential in Underrepresented People," and, as the name suggests, it focuses on helping all students – even those who don't think they have an aptitude for math – understand and apply math concepts. The best way to do that, Parry says, is to get kids to think like engineers.

The field of engineering, it turns out, isn't familiar to most kids in elementary school. But, Parry says, that's where math gets real.

"The thing I like about engineering is that you have to work in teams, which goes against what most people think," she says. "A successful engineer can only work in teams. You're also allowed to make mistakes; in fact, you're encouraged to. And that's just something that kids do not learn in the K-12 environment. There is no right or wrong answer in engineering, but there are best answers based on your priorities and data. You have the right to re-do and in fact are expected to."

The undergraduate students who work with RAMP UP make a point of bringing engineering principles into the classroom. Solving a problem like an engineer, Parry says, makes it easy to see how science and math interact, and how they work in the real world.

"One of the examples is an exercise we call 'bungie Barbie,' where you're using algebra and the equation of lines, figuring out the slope and Y intercept to determine how many rubber bands to hook onto Barbie's feet so you can throw her over a stairwell and not bash her head in," she says.

At Fuller Elementary School in Raleigh, RAMP UP students help out in Nancy Woodward's third grade class, introducing the children to geometry. And they've helped her launch an after-school energy club for third, fourth and fifth grade students. At a recent club meeting, a dozen students worked in teams, building small solar-powered model houses. The students were having so much fun, they seemed reluctant to leave their desks when their parents arrived to pick them up.

Woodward says her students enjoy working on projects with the college students. The enthusiasm for math and engineering – especially among the girls – is exciting for Woodward to see.

"When I started out in education, girls didn't do that kind of thing at all," she says. "That's one of the goals of the RAMP UP program – to show girls and other minorities that science can be fun and it's an option for them."

From an economic perspective, it's important to make science, technology, engineering and math – the so-called STEM disciplines – accessible for young women and minorities. For the U.S. to remain competitive globally, employers need an educated workforce to fill high-tech jobs – and unless women and minorities join that workforce, there simply won't be enough scientists, engineers and programmers to meet the need.

A recent report by the U.S. Department of Education says math scores measured in grades 4 and 8 are "unacceptably low," and tend to decline as students progress through high school. Nationwide, less than one-third of eighth-graders are proficient in math.

The report calls the situation "sobering" and casts doubt on the "the ability of the nation's educational institutions to produce citizens literate in STEM concepts and to produce future scientists, engineers, mathematicians, and technologists."

Even more worrisome is the "achievement gap" between white and minority students – now the widest it's been since the early 1990s.

At RAMP UP, Parry and her team are well aware of the challenges facing K-12 education. After all, the undergrads who work in the program were sitting in high school classrooms just a few years ago. In many respects, their backgrounds and experiences are similar to those of the young students they're helping.

Energy Club
NC State graduate student Lynn Albers finds a light source for a solar panel while energy club members work together to test its output.

"When I advertise for filling a position in RAMP UP, I always end up with a majority of women and minority students," Parry says. "Last year we were 50 percent African American and 70 percent women. I don't seek that; I look for people who like to work with kids. But that's how it's turned out and the undergrads will tell you it's because they've been in that seat. They've sat in that seat where someone didn't believe in them, and now they want to make a difference."

Lynn Albers, a graduate student completing her Ph.D. in mechanical engineering at NC State, supervises about a half-dozen undergrads in RAMP UP. She says the benefits of the program are real – and sometimes dramatic. She recounts the story of a fourth grade student who had below-basic skills in math at the beginning of the school year.

"One of our students began working one-on-one with her and by the end of the year he had her doing matrix algebra," Albers says. "For a fourth grader, that's phenomenal."

The student moved from below-basic to advanced in one school year – a jump of three assessment levels.

Albers is impressed with the energy and commitment her undergrads bring to the program.

"We have two young men who have 4.0 grade point averages. They work RAMP UP 10 hours a week and they're both in ROTC, which is a huge time sink. How they manage their time I really don't know," she says. "They all love working with the kids. They love what they do. They come up with original ideas and they become personally invested in the kids that they work with."

On a campus where internships and community service opportunities abound, NC State students compete for a place in RAMP UP. Within hours of posting a notice that she was accepting applications into the program last fall, Parry had 30 inquiries from interested students – most of them engineering majors.

"I was able to hire six young people who are the cream of the crop," she says. "But they were all outstanding. There wasn't one person who wasn't qualified."

Ironically, the future of RAMP UP is uncertain. Its five-year funding from the National Science Foundation runs out next year. But the need for the program, Parry says, isn't going away.

"I do a lot of presentations with kids and I start out by saying, 'Do you ever sit in class and wonder why am I learning this?' And all the hands go up."

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