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Most Recent Status Reports:

Succeed Strategy - Eda Davis-Butts:

Four members of the committee attended the April 24, 2008 teleconference.

Don Kirkwood reported on his presentation at the Oregon Association of Career and Technical Educators (OACTE) conference, titled “ScienceTechnologyEngineeringMath: with all your concerns, why should you care?” and given to a standing-room-only crowd of 40-50 people.  He estimates that 1/3 were administrators and 1/3 teachers.

• The talk was well-received, and “knocked a lot of illusions out” of the audiences heads concerning occupational outlook, cost of creating programs, and availability of resources and examples.
• Three administrators and 4 or 5 teachers spent additional time with Don; some of these intend further followup, perhaps with on-site visits.  Don will follow up with these administrators to ask if COSA is an appropriate venue for this presentation.  We have probably missed this year’s window unless we finagle some special handling.
• Don has just received his enrollment numbers for next year’s AP CS; in the last three years at North Salem, it has doubled.  He will send these numbers to Jo.
• Next year at OACTE, Don plans a session centered on specific techniques to achieve gender and other kinds of equity.
• The workgroup discussed how to leverage both this presentation and Don’s work in North Salem to enhance replicability.  Some elements that might be folded in to more detailed planning of the ETIC/ OPAS Proposal:
• Creation of a support structure for these programs.
• Mentoring for new teachers:  both new to teaching these courses, and new to teaching.
• Hosting visiting teachers in Don’s classroom (there is a state-wide mentoring program for new teachers that may help with this.)
• On-site visits to new programs by mentor teachers.
• Perhaps a one or half-day conference/workshop.
• Would a teacher on special assignment format be appropriate?
• SuperQuest might be a good starting point for some or all of this.
• This discussion returned to the idea of minigrants previously discussed.  Don uses funds for refreshments and door prizes at recruiting events such as “No Boys Allowed”; cannot use school district money for these costs.
• If a minigrant program could be established at a non-profit, it would address many issues.
• Structure the program to target SuperQuest attendees only at first; 10 – 15 schools at around $2,000 each.
• Could extend advertising the program to events such as ORTOP, PSU Engineering Day, etc.
• Criteria include teachers; minority recruiting to pre-engineering and CS in-class programs; enrichment to such programs (field trips, additional materials)
• Small grant amounts
• Possible matching structure would make the program more attractive to funders in the long run.
• Support for seeking in-kind donations from the local community
• Boilerplate ask letters
• Endorsement
• Possible contacts at the state-wide level (state chamber of commerce, state Rotary)
• Don gives out computers as door prizes – seek out a single donation of multiple computers as an in-kind donation to the minigrant program?

A short brainstorming session on how the group might contribute to equity-creating strategies across all segments of the ETIC/ OPAS Proposal resulted in a recommendation to be very intentional about creating equity, and in planning for family involvement.  Discussion will continue.

Some concern was expressed about an engineering coaches program creating equitable compensation issues with other science-based extracurricular activities.  Careful implementation might minimize this risk.

Next Meeting:  May 22, 2008 3:30 – 5:00 via teleconference.

Respectfully submitted, Jo Oshiro, April 24, 2008

Motivate - Ben Manny and Eileen Boerger:

The January 30, 2008 worksession meeting of the Motivate group was attended by 10 members and two guests, Bruce Schafer and Karen Lakin (Saturday Academy).

The OPAS Investment Model and draft sub-plans were discussed in some detail.  Ben Manny previously volunteered Motivate to take the lead for these segments:

• the OST (out of school time) team-based engineering for grades 9-12,
• the OST team-based computer science for grades 9-12, and

to contribute to the Marketing segment.  The group brainstormed some plans to address the segments in preparation for the February 8 ETIC meeting:

• Marketing – pull in Businesses via NEM;
• Engineering coach extra-duty stipends for teachers, based on the athletics model;
• Internships for students & educators;
• Linking volunteers to CRLEs and Capstone courses in mentoring relationships;
• Enhancing FIRST Tech Challenge by increasing the number of teams and adding relevance components;
• Enhancing NOISE by improvements and staffing to the TechnoScienceSupersite;
• Funding a “tiny RFP” program to enable teachers needing funds for field trips and enrichment activities such as field trips, mini-conferences, travel funds for inter-school teacher visits to study best practices.

The group decided to combine some of the ideas, resulting in the following recommendations:

• Tiny RFPs – are really the purview of the Prepare Workgroup; Jo will bring this idea to their attention.
• Internships – to be developed by Joyce Cresswell and Mary Beth Horton, with additional input from Karen Lakin and Eileen Boerger; a very few slides to Bruce ASAP and written sub-plan by February 6, 2008.
• For students:
• $2200 per student
• Mentor company matching at $1000 - $2000 per sudent
• 75% go into a STEM field
• 78% of kids interning in a technical field choose a technical major – Joyce will articulate definition of “technical field”
• 50 students annually, 320 contact hours per student
• Cost per contact hour per student = $6.80 ~$7
• Don Domes says there is pent-up demand among students.
• For educators
• 150 – 180 students per educator per year; accumulates
• $2,500 per educator to help offset startup costs
• Companies match $2,500
• 10 teachers, 5.5 weeks of internship
• OST team-based engineering & CS opportunities for students – to be developed by Ben Manny, Don Domes, David Coronado and Endi Hartigan; sub-plan draft to Bruce no later than Wednesday, February 6, 2008.
• Program scalable, track record – not lock in brand, but be able to articulate example

• E.g. FIRST Tech Challenge – would benefit from relevance pieces
• Stipends for extra-duty teachers - $2,000 per teacher
• Equipment scholarships - $2,000 per team
• Targets: 50 teams ~500 students per year
• Contact hours per student per year estimate ~ 150 hours per student per year.

Next Meeting:  Thursday, February 14, 2008 3:30 – 5:00.

Respectfully submitted, Jo Oshiro, January 31, 2008

NOISE (Network of Informal STEM Educators) :

The kickoff conference for NOISE was held at OMSI on February 5th; it was funded by an ETIC grant. About 90 people participated and the evaluations are very positive. We hope that with very little guidance, this group will become self-sustaining. OMSI will be hosting a website and informational email address. OUS will host listservs. Meetings for the Leadership, Communications, Funding, and Connections to Formal Education committees are under the purview of their members, who signed up at the event. . OPAS interests significantly overlap, but are not 100% congruent with NOISE interests. Available documents at this time:

• a photoroster of attendees;
• the keynote address slides from Charlie Walters, Fort Worth Science and History Museum. Texas' Informal Science Education Association (ISEA) is celebrating its 10th anniversary;
• Texas' ISEA Guidelines for Informal Science Education;
• NOISE committee rosters as signed up at the conference .

Update 4/20/07:  The NOISE webpage at OMSI is in service at http:// www.omsi.edu/noise.
Update 4/24/07:  The NOISE communications committee is in flux, but has asked that the TechnoScienceSuperSite and NOISE be linked to an OPAS webpage.

Update 01/08/08: Links to the TechnoScienceSupersite and the listserv are in place on the NOISE home page.

Prepare – Dick Knight and Sean Gallagher:

Six members of the workgroup attended the December 4 meeting.  Discussion centered around Project Lead the Way (PLTW) and practical details of helping Tim Brower, State Affiliate Director, as outlined in the last meeting.  Probable activities center around:

• We have begun coordination with Judith D’Amico, Director of State and Corporate Relations, Western Region, for PLTW.  If you have input for this conversation, please get it to Jo or Dick.
• Creating a PLTW webpage for workgroup members and other interested parties linked to the OPAS site
• Publicity and summary materials on PLTW, especially as they pertain to Oregon
• Powerpoint presentations
• Evaluation data/articles
• Enabling PLTW courses to help fulfill the expanded graduation requirements through one or more of
• math and science requirements, either through standards alignment or credit by proficiency
• essential skills requirements
• Articulation and college credit for PLTW courses – when is it appropriate, how much, at what institutions/departments/programs?
• Finding a way to reach rural schools
• Don’t have the economies of scale of larger schools
• Many farm kids have the practical knowledge to make great engineers.
• Finding a way to connect students to real-life experiences, perhaps through business and mentoring.  Anecdotal evidence is that these experiences, whether a field trip, job shadow or a mentored science or engineering project, are extremely engaging to students.
• Helping Tim develop a longer-term “business plan” for PLTW.

Bruce presented his “Possible Investment Model” which attempts to package the highest scoring, most feasible concepts from previous brainstorming into something cohesive and comprehensible for selling to the legislature and other funding sources.  The package includes pre-engineering and Computer Science; marketing/outreach; and Out of School Time component programs which are already in place Oregon and seem scalable.  Overall reaction was positive; Bruce and staff will need to solicit additional help from the committees to flesh this out into a legislative package.

Other activity:

• The Hillsboro/Beaverton/PSU Noyce scholars program is more successful than anticipated with 47 teachers.  Many of them want to get a terminal degree; most are science teachers with a few elementary teachers.
• Techstart Education Foundation has received a capacity building grant which will probably affect SuperQuest.  Dick is part of the ongoing conversation at Techstart.

The December meeting has been cancelled; the next regularly scheduled meeting is January 22; we may have Judith D'Amico and Tim Brower with us (confirmations coming after December 20).

Respectfully submitted, Jo Oshiro, 12/17/07

Update 01/08/08: Prepare i s working on bringing Judy D’Amico, national Project Lead The Way Director for State and Corporate Relations, to town on January 22 and 23 and helping her meet stakeholders and having her share the experience and expertise of other states on implementation issues.  In particular, we are discussing community college credit and university recognition of PLTW.

 

Pathways - Tom Thompson:

Italics indicate activity since the meeting.

Four members of the workgroup met with Bob Broeg of WOU, Past Chair of the OCCC (Oregon Council of Computer Chairs), to explore possible opportunities and challenges for a statewide articulation agreement for CS (Computer Science) degrees, analogous to the Manufacturing Engineering Technology Statewide Articulation Agreement.  The OCCC promotes and coordinates computer curriculum among the public community colleges and public universities in Oregon.

Issues and considerations in creating such an agreement:

• Because of previous work and relationships among the OCCC, the framework on which an articulation agreement could be built is in place; Bob believes the interest is probably there.
• More than one flavor of CS degree may be needed as it is a very broad discipline; it is not unusual to find a CS doctoral candidate with no undergraduate CS.  There are cultural differences between CS in liberal arts colleges (emphasis on discrete math) and in engineering schools (emphasis on calculus).  Bob said he is educating CS students to work in the 80% of high tech jobs in Oregon that are not in a high tech industry.
• ACM (national professional society for computer science, not an accrediting body) has a standard for course numbering.
• A nationally-normed assessment would be very useful.  Something might exist in NOCTI. (Jo’s cursory review of the NOCTI Computer Networking Fundamentals and Computer Programming Assessments documentation at http://www.nocti.org/ResultsExp.cfm?category=Computer%20Related is that these assessments are not appropriate for CS past the first year, and perhaps not past the first programming class.  No object-oriented concepts or data structures appear to be included. The College Board has an Information Systems and Computer Applications exam that looks a bit more thorough, but is definitely slanted to Information Systems and Technology not CS – see http://www.collegeboard.com/student/testing/clep/ex_isca.html)
• Finding bandwidth from appropriate people:CS departments tend to be small, and students/courses require a significant degree of support.  From Bob: “All of this and the stuff we do on the ETIC CS Task Force is really good, but if we don’t do a good job in the classroom none of it matters.”

Tom and Susan will develop a scope of work statement for this project, and investigate possible funding and additional staff support.  Scott start conversations with potential recruits once this summary is in his hands.

The Manufacturing Engineering Technology Statewide Articulation Agreement has been completely signed off; Jo can widely distribute the “Good News for Students” article.  This information was well-received at both OACTE (Oregon Association of Career and Technical Educators) in April and the NW Youth Career Expo in May.  Further publicity materials will  be developed, especially for high school students and counselors.  Again, it was emphasized that the Articulation agreement is a bundling of courses rather than a conferred degree or an extensive implementation of new curricula.

Much of the continuing work of this committee is planned to be done offline.  The next meeting will probably be scheduled for October.

Respectfully submitted, Jo Oshiro, 7/31/07

Update 12/17/07: Tom Thompson presented the articulation work to the Oregon Council of Computer Chairs (OCCC) at their regular meeting, November 2. Reaction was positive. OCCC consists of computer science instructors, deans, and professors from community colleges and universities. Bruce Schafer and Dick Knight also brought the group up-to-date on the activities of the ETIC Computer Science Taskforce and the OPAS Prepare Workgroup. Conversations around doing the next set of statewide articulation agreements with CS programs have begun.

Update 01/08/08: There has been a lull in ongoing discussions about targeting CS as the next statewide articulation agreements that should pick up now that the new term has started.

Marketing and Communications (Di Saunders):

Potential Marketing Help, as developed by the now sunsetted OPAS Marketing Committee July 24, 2006.

Volunteers and OUS Staff may contribute to the OPAS Initiative work in the following ways:

1. Outreach to Dept. of Education on curriculum changes (involves development of fact sheets; 2-pagers; sample curriculum; presentation materials).
2. Outreach to legislature to support building of pipeline; OPAS funding with ETIC budget; and curricular inclusions.
3. Dissemination of information on resources for students and teachers (eg, BEC Techno Supersite, grant/program opportunities, professional development opportunities.
4. Student-based materials on “what is engineering”, how to prepare, educational opportunities, how engineering is entry point to other careers such as marketing, logistics management, etc; use of creative design to attract teen readers (website or hard copy, tee shirts, etc.).
5. Materials for specific populations, such as under-served students, under-represented students (e.g, “For Girls Only” brochure on engineering).
6. Compilation and use of data to support various efforts to answer commonly asked questions and concerns.
7. Outreach to business groups and foundations to gain support and endorsement.
8. Public outreach on “what’s in it for me” to have more trained engineers in the state.

Respectfully submitted, Jo Oshiro, 1/30/07

 Steering Committee (OPASS) - Bruce Schafer

Thanks to hard work of Dick Knight and many of you, we were well prepared for our "15 minutes of fame" at the ETIC meeting on Friday afternoon. Dick Knight did a great job of presenting our case backed up by Ben Manny, Eda Davis-Lowe, and Eileen Boerger. See http://www.oregonetic.org/09-11/OPASslides020808.pdf for the slides that Dick presented.

During Q&A we received more supportive comments than questions or suggestions. Along the way, several things became clear:
(1) The ETIC industry members and some key academic members really like our approach.
(2) What they like about it most is its ability to "deliver" more well-prepared college freshmen that are inclined to choose engineering, computer science, or material science as their major.
(3) They want to see systemic change that will outlast OPAS as a committee structure.
(4) They want to us to deliver a balance of quantity, quality and diversity.
(5) While they didn't see our proposed "price tag" of $4.5 million over two year as being too high, their ability to help us get this level of funding will be limited by two things: (a) how well we make our case going forward; and (b) the amount of new tax revenues that become available to the Oregon Legislature in 2009. (Clearly we can't affect the latter but we can certainly affect the former.)

Our next step is to produce a written plan that give the specifics of our proposal based on the template* that I've attached. We have until March 7th to turn in this plan. We can use the sub-proposals that we started developing in January as "running starts" towards completing this plan. The Investment Description should should include a description of how we will stage the growth of our programs in terms of geography, types of schools, target student audiences, etc. It will need to address each of the six areas identified on slide 5 of last Friday's slide set. In most cases our plan should not be brand-specific. In other words, instead of saying it will allocate $x thousand to program A, $y thousand to program B, and $z thousand to program C, it should say it will allocate $x+y+z thousand to program(s) with the following characteristics: (a)...(b)...(c)..., possibly citing programs A, B, or C as having some of those characteristics.

We'll need a draft ready by the end of February so we can spend the first week of March editing it so it's ready to submit on March 7th. Please contact me to let me to let me know what role you can play during February. In the meantime, Jo will be in touch regarding scheduling one or two Steering Committee meetings during February.

...Bruce

* We can change the last table to best describe how we want to be measured as long as it's clear that we a proposing something which can be objectively measured and will produce the results that ETIC is looking for.
Respectfully submitted, Bruce Schafer, February 12, 2008

For questions or information regarding OPAS Initiative activity, please email Jo Oshiro or call (503) 725.2910.

last update to this page February 12, 2008 jco