| August
29, 2005 Vol. 77, no. 1F
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| SOLAR
SCIENCE PROJECT: Two middle school students
test their solar-powered robot car, which they designed and built.
The students were taking classes in the College’s summer
math and science enrichment program for local schools.
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“This gets my mojo going”
Preteens build solar cars and science skills during summer program
In a classroom on the lower
level of Bechtel Engineering Center, 11- and 12-year-olds are trying
to get their cars to work. Their assignment is to design and build a
toy robot car powered by a solar cell. It’s a big task, and the
teams don’t get much handholding. “You’ve got to do
black to black and red to red!” one boy instructs another. “I
told you we had the wires backward. I told you so.”
It’s summer, the time
K-12 students give their brains a rest, but these students are attending
the College of Engineering’s TEAMS (Teaching Engineering Applying
Math Science) Academy, a six-week summer enrichment program conducted
jointly by Pre-Engineering Partnerships and the Professional Development
Program. TEAMS targets underserved minority seventh through twelfth
graders from local schools.
The program
aims to boost learning in math and to integrate math and science through
engineering projects. Short term, the goal is to give students a head
start in the coming school year. Long term, TEAMS hopes these students
one day apply to an engineering, math or science program, here at Berkeley
or another university.
Back in the classroom,
a boy says to no one in particular, “This gets my mojo going.
Yes!” A step completed, he throws his arms up in victory. It’s
music to instructor Daniel Prull’s ears. Prull (M.S.’05
ME), a doctoral student in unmanned aerial vehicles, is teaching robotics
engineering, but he covers everything from the periodic table, to earth
science principles, to his specialty: how airplanes fly.
“When I asked the
class what engineering was, no one knew,” says Prull. “But
when I told them what engineering does — like making robots and
airplanes and BART — they understood and thought it was cool.”
Prull has been a graduate
student instructor for 12 undergraduate courses, he says, but nothing
prepared him for the huge job of teaching middle schoolers. “I’ve
never been so tired in my life,” he says. On a year-long fellowship
funded by a National Science Foundation grant, Prull says he’s
worked about 50 hours a week this summer teaching, prepping, and grading.
“I told the students
in the beginning that now they’re Cal students for the summer,
and I’m going to treat them like Cal students,” he says.
That means homework, quizzes and grades (but Prull often takes breaks
outside to let students run around or throw a football). Though Prull
struggles to get students to turn in homework and stay on task, the
kids themselves say they like the course.
“I’ve learned
how to find out how many neutrons an element has,” says Terrence
McCrary, 11, from Northern Light School in Oakland. So would he consider
a career in science?
“I’m really
into sports,” McCrary replies. “I want to play baseball
or football someday, but I’d consider robotics as a backup.”
For more on TEAMS, go to
http://www.coe.berkeley.edu/cues/.
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