K-12 Outreach
The EUV Center has initiated its outreach to K-12 with programs for students and teachers in Colorado and California. The goal is to make a sustained multi-year effort that has a lasting impact on the intended audience. We offer a variety of opportunities for students and teachers. These opportunities, listed below, are lead by faculty and graduate students of the EUV center as well as by outreach coordinators at our education parternerships.
Research Experience for Teachers (RET)
A 6 week, hands on, paid research experience for high school teachers at one of the NSF ERC EUV sites. During this period, teachers will perform research, participate in education workshops on optics, develop new curriculum based on their experience, be audience to lectures by professors from the sites and present their results at a symposium. For application information, please contact Ellen Plese. The application deadline is March 31, 2018.
Light & Optics Workshops for Teachers
These half-day workshops are held at a local site and involve
highly interactive experiments, demonstrations and inquiry-based
discussions on the topics of light and optics. There is a version for middle school teachers and another for high
school teachers. The demonstration-question-experiment process
advocated in the workshops is designed to elicit student discovery
by encouraging a constructivist approach to learning.
The intended goal is to provide teachers with a complete sequence
of questions and discussion points, which, in combination
with experiments, can successfully steer students to discover
for themselves the nature of physical phenomena in light/optics.
The actual lab materials that accompany such an effort are
often minimal and quite simple. Yet, in the context of a well
designed thought process, they are also very powerful. Thus
the emphasis is on the architecture of the discussion rather
than the equipment. Each teacher is provided with a box of materials at the end of the workshop.
Light & Optics Lab for Students
On an annual basis, the EUV Center hosts a group of 24 high
school students from Poudre High School in Fort Collins, CO.
Students attend four separate sessions (held over two weeks)
in a teaching lab at the Engineering Research Center on the
CSU campus. In groups of two or three, students conduct a
series of experiments on optical tables using lab equipment.
Students work through each lab guided by a lab manual consisting
of a series of questions designed to teach students about
reflection, refraction, diffraction, lenses, lasers, fiber
optics, polarization, etc. These workshops have been very
successful and highly popular with the students.
A group of Poudre High School students took the following quiz .
Dr. Margaret Murnane created a presentation for the CU Wizards outreach program that focused on UV light. The presentation involves a power point and many hands on activities that allow people of all ages to appreciate the unique characteristics of UV light.
Let's Make Light
Dr. Carmen Menoni developed a workshop for female elementary school students in
Fort Collins, CO. The workshop addresses the properties of
light and how it is generated in incandescent and florescent
bulbs, LEDs and light sticks. Elementary school girls participate
in the workshop by performing several experiments with these
different sources of light. The workshop is part of an annual
month-long series aimed at motivating women to enter science.
The Nature of Light
The CU Science Discovery Program is currently offering monthly teacher workshops (called Science Explorers) on light that were developed as part of our collaboration with this program. The Education Director, Kristi Dahl, worked with the previous ERC EUV director, Michael Celaya, to develop these hands on, inquiry based workshops that have been attended by over 50 teachers and 250 students this year. The CU Science Discovery Program also offers classes and workshops for both teachers and students during the school year and summer on a variety of topics.
Invitation to ParticipateIf you are interested in participating in these outreach activities as either a teacher or a learner, please contact The Engineering Research Center .
After Participation Please fill out the Outreach Log sheet and return it to The Engineering Research Center
K-12 Outreach Collaborators