Engaging secondary sTEM teachers in automotive engineering and alternative energy research at a university site

The department of mechanical Engineering at Oakland University was awarded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) a three year Research Experience for Teachers(RET) grant to support a group of secondary STEM teachers to conduct Automotive Engineering and Alternative Energy research at Oakland University. The program has run successfully for three consecutive summers between 2016 and 2018. The program aims to inspire K-12 STEM teaching and learning by engaging the secondary STEM teachers in the research project as well as exposing them to engineering education pedagogy. A total of 36 teachers from 12 different schools have taken part in the program. More than half of the participants were female teachers, and nearly half of the participants taught at urban schools with high percentage of students of color. The RET participants worked in teams with graduate students and faculty mentors on automotive engineering and alternative energy related projects, and participated in other activities such as research seminars, machine shop training, CAD workshop, and industrial sites visit. Another important element of the program is engineering related course module development. The RET participants took 16 hours course module development workshop during the course of the program, and each participant was expected to design and develop a course module in the summer and implement it in the classroom in the following academic year. Over the 3 years of the program, the RET participants created 29 engineering modules to implement inside their classrooms. The purpose of this paper is to share the experience of organizing and running such a research and teaching program for the teachers and to report the program organization, outcomes and some assessments results.