Engineering does not cross the mind of most middle school students as a potential career. VaNTH, an outreach program at Northwestern, is trying to change this awareness by going into the classroom to demonstrate basic engineering and applied science concepts.
VaNTH Consortium also includes Vanderbilt University, University of Texas at Austin and the Health Science and Technology program at Harvard-MIT. It was formed six years ago after receiving a grant from the National Science Foundation.
At NU, the “Get-a-Grip” program has brought undergraduate, graduate and middle school students together every quarter for two years to build artificial limbs for a fictional girl from Afghanistan.
James Finley, a biomedical engineering graduate student and co-chair of Get-a-Grip, said the college students instruct using an experience-based teaching method called the Legacy cycle.
“We present a problem to the (middle school) students and they go on their own to research to solve the problem.”
The Get-a-Grip program is student-run. Several graduate students and about 20 undergraduates volunteer at a different middle school each quarter to teach scientific concepts such as torque, inertia and density.
The program is designed to give young students on Chicago’s South Side a better applied-science background, but NU volunteers primarily visit local schools because the South Side is too far away. NU recruited students from the University of Illinois at Chicago to teach South Side students.
Training for the course is short but extensive. Two Saturdays per year, Finley and others train undergraduate students for three hours with practice lessons and other exercises to give them experience for the classroom.
“The goal of the program is to have middle schoolers informed about engineering as a career and for the college students to learn more about curriculum development,” said Suzanne Olds, Get-a-Grip adviser and assistant chair of NU’s biomedical engineering department.
Finley said the middle school students are also given a survey before and after the class to gauge what they learned.
“Some of the kids really get a firm grasp of the concepts and I really like the diversity of ideas the students come up with,” said Joe Farnam, the McCormick senior who runs the logistical operations for Get-a-Grip. “I like how the kids remember my name and end up enjoying our presence more.”
The lessons are much more hands-on than a traditional lecture would be, Finley added. During one class visit, the middle school students learned how to sketch technical drawings and got a crash course in engineering design. Farnam said the kids enjoyed the hands-on part of the lecture, such as building the arm, more than learning the theories.
The Get-a-Grip outreach program has funding for at least one more year, Finley said.
Reach Brian Regan at [email protected].
