Agenda - #18 - October 8, 2008

Summary: Eight members of the Motivate Workgroup attended the October 8 meeting; Bruce Schafer also attended to update the group on the status of the ETIC POP.

• After discussions with the Governor’s Office, ETIC decided all campuses should have the opportunity to align their proposals with the foci on recruitment, retention, and clean technology. Re-aligned proposals were presented to ETIC on September 29th. Within ETIC, OPAS is the focus of recruitment, and the new ETIC Retention Task Force will have a pool of $250K plus some direct allocations to campuses. OPAS funds within the ETIC Base Budget (Essential Budget Level or EBL) are $1.3M. There is a very small chance additional increments of $5M or $10M may be granted to ETIC, of which OPAS’ share would be $400K or $800K.  All of this planning took place before the updated revenue forecasts could account for the stock market/real estate downturn. In the planning process, reductions in the OPAS proposal have been made proportionally across all segments; there is an opportunity to strategically focus on certain segments or aspects of the proposal and submit those changes for ETIC’s approval.

Additional topics:

• Ben and Endi met with Joe Holliday, Assistant Vice Chancellor for Student Success, and Rob Findtner from WOU Admissions, exploring data mining for longitudinal correlations between OST activity and college activity.
• OUS engineering enrollment is not limited by capacity.
• OST data does not appear to be readily available.
• Most admissions data is transcription-based at OUS institutions; private college may be able to offer different insights.
• Endi recommends talking with OUS Institutional Research.
• Ben and Don briefly presented the draft of the White Paper on the Engineering Coach/Champion Pilot program he is working on with the Lemelson Foundation; an additional partner to bring $10K to the table would be most persuasive.  Ben and Bruce will work on some financial forecasting for the proposal.
• Several teachers are taking this idea and running with it already, but these are the low-hanging fruit.  About 10 teachers at SuperQuest (WOU) took applications and got funding promises for next year.  There are issues with the budget timing that will be taken into account in future.
• Endi, Ryan, and Don praised Ben’s work on the paper.
• Ryan suggested a stronger emphasis, in the results section, on metrics, demographics, qualities of experience, and using the pilot to help determine the appropriate metrics to measure Engineering Coach/Champion programs, and how those data are collected.
• An endorsement page is planned.
• Mary Beth shared BEC news:
• National Engineers’ Month is ramping up, with a target of 50 participating companies, a significant increase from last year’s 28.
• Mark Read in now the full-time Business Development Coordinator, bringing experience and connections to the job and is off to a great start.
• BEC is strengthening its relationship with OMSI, partnering on a number of levels. A celebration event is planned in mid-February, in conjunction with the opening of the Da Vinci exhibit. They hope to schedule the Governor and Susan Castillo for the event.
• Ryan: SMILE is just starting their collaboration with the senior Mechanical Engineering students’ capstone project in conjunction with the SMILE Middle School Engineering Challenge.  One of the students is a former SMILE student.  The project is a water-powered car running on 1liter of water at 1 meter on a 2 kilogram vehicle.
• Endi: The Oregon College Access Network is having a workshop at Lane Community College and is looking for more K-12 attendees.  This was announced recently in “In the OPASsphere”, and Jo will forward the information to Jeanne Yerkovich.

The next meeting is Wednesday, November 12.  We will begin planning for a face-to-face meeting in January, and discuss whether a December meeting is necessary.  Jo will poll for January dates.

Agenda - #17 - September 10, 2008

Summary: in process

Agenda #16 - August 20, 2008

Summary: The Motivate Workgroup met on August 20.  A wide-ranging discussion including Bruce Schafer reaffirmed that the eventual goal of the Engineering Coach Model is more than a team participating in a league or externally organized competition, although that team may be the most immediately implementable piece of the model.  Criteria for assessing student quality of experience and program goals and supports, discussed during June’s worksession, were revisited. Ultimately, we wish to not only affirm engineering enthusiasts in their choice, but to encourage students who might otherwise not consider engineering to become motivated to pursue these experiences and disciplines. Bruce continues to emphasize that in order to have a handle on the administration and evaluation of programs (e.g., FIRST Tech Challenge) a limited number of models and organizations is much to be desired.  

Several teachers recruited at SuperQuest were interested, and Don and Terrel are seeing some applications come through.  Don Domes remains confident that he will be able to secure funding to support these pilot efforts.

Respectfully submitted, Jo Oshiro, September 5, 2008

Agenda - #15 - July 16, 2008

Meeting Record for July 16, 2008 - In Process

Summary in Process

Agenda - #14 - June 5, 2008

Detailed Meeting Record for June 5, 2008

Summary: Eight members of the workgroup attending the June 5 worksession, hosting guests Jay Well of the OSU SMILE program; Terrel Smith of Sherwood High School; Jill Tucker from the OPAS Succeed Workgroup and the Lemelson Foundation. A wide-ranging discussion of the Engineering Team Challenge Pilot Program  as an element of the OPAS “Bright Future” proposal to ETIC converged on these key points:

• A “club” format is preferable to a “team” format:
• Clubs are more inclusive and can provide a safe place with a group of like-minded kids who like school, math, science. Club activities may include fielding one or more teams to one or more kinds of competitions and exhibitions, and can provide a context outside of a competition season, follow-on activities, and fitting activities to current student interests and local resources.
• Engineering-based service activities or programs such as “Design For the Other 90%” could be key to recruiting women, ethnic minorities and potential first-generation-to-college students.
• OPAS wants to support activities that focus on its goals, that leverage existing programs and infrastructures. We want clubs of future engineers rather than future research scientists.
• Core mission: increasing interest in ongoing engineering education.
• Club “coaches”:
• Are local champions/evangelists.
• Need an assistant for increased flexibility, and support.
• Are a focus point for sponsors and volunteers.
• Need mentors and funding.
• Extra pay for extra work is good.
• Need connections to high quality curriculum and activities, ways to connect that back to classroom curriculum and standards, a common methodology around delivering content.
• A central support organization is necessary:
• Coaches should not have to invent infrastructure.
• Summer workshop:
• Share curriculum – plenty of good stuff out there.
• Develop and share methodology for delivering content and practicing skills to best engage students – early adopters can help develop these.
•  (Ryan) Oregon State might be interested in housing the central support organization and running its workshop.
• (Ben) Techstart could be a logical home of administration; STEM OST could be a separate thread inside SuperQuest. Don and Terrel concur.
• Early adopter champions (Don Domes, Terrel Smith) can each mentor another school.
• Selection and evaluation:
• At least one of the pilot schools must be rural.
• We must look at evaluation from the beginning.
• David Coronado of MESA and Ryan Collay of SMILE may have a key set of 5 metrics to suggest.
• Costs:
• Terrel: I think I could find at SuperQuest 6-8 schools that would be interested in trying this model, but at an estimated $20K apiece, that’s $200K. If that money is not a reality, it is hard to put the program out there.
• 2 teachers extra-duty contract:
• Year 1: 50% school district match; OPAS may need to cover equipment
• Year 2: 50% school district match
• Year 3: 75% school district match
• (3 year horizon is important, as teacher contracts are for 3 years).
• Ryan will provide better explicated cost figures.
• Necessary and Sufficient Conditions:
• Terrel: It takes a champion in the school. Principals and superintendents are way too busy, we’ve tried it for years. Buy a day for teachers to come understand your dream, and then you launch them. I can host a 2 hour workshop for SuperQuest teachers on how to do this. Some might do it without the funding in place. Terrel, as the Union representative, has written this idea into the contract currently being negotiated with Sherwood, and recruited John Niebergall to act as the coach/advisor should the stipend survive the negotiation process.
• Ben: the pilot portion of this program could be identifying that first group of champions.
• One resource might be OMSI’s new OMSI Ambassador program, which is attempting to identify an OMSI champion at each school to serve as a communications conduit.

Next Meeting: Wednesday, July 9 4:00 – 5:00 (subsequently rescheduled to July 16, 3:30 – 5:00)

Respectfully submitted, Jo Oshiro, July 3, 2008

Agenda - #13 - May 2, 2007

Detailed Meeting Record for May 2, 2008 - in process

Summary: in process

Agenda - #12 - March 28, 2008

Summary: Six Motivate Workgroup members met on March 28, 2007.  Bruce Schafer attended, updating the group on the current status of the OPAS proposal to ETIC:

• The total ask of $4.5 M was prioritized into
• Essential Budget Level (EBL) or Level 0 priority: $1.2 M
• Level 1 Priority: $3.4 M
• There are two additional Priority Levels in the overall ETIC budget plan.
• The version presented to ETIC is being updated for contact hours.
• Eileen and Bruce felt that ETIC strongly endorsed the OPAS program, in large part because much of it is based on programs that are already successful.  We should continue to emphasize that we want to build on existing success around the state.
• Bruce is fairly confident that we will get between $1.5 and $3.0 M, and perhaps the entire $4.5 M.
• The group decided we should continue to develop the proposal as a business and implementation plan; alternative funding could be addressed with a more detailed plan.

The group discussed some implementation details around the “Engineering Challenge” portion of the proposal. 

• Teacher stipend models; the importance of stipends
• How to approach school district and building administration to explore workability issues.
• The importance of setting expectations –
• Teams in some environments get fewer contact hours.  Does this set them up for lower performance in competition/adjudication, which leads them to conclude technical disciplines are not for them?
• Areas around which to organize ongoing factfinding:
• Challenge organizations/models: InvenTeam, OGPC, FTC – do these challenges need to be beefed up?
• Finding and training coaches
• Recruiting School Districts and Stipends

The Internship portion of the proposal is pretty well understood and detailed.

Status on other projects and programs:

• NEM 2008 broke all records, serving over 22,000 students with ~400 participating engineers, an increase of 30%, in large part due to IEEE and ODOT.  900 Classrooms, 21 counties, 370 participating educators. Mary Beth expects to finish the final numbers soon.
• BEC will again include additional volunteer opportunities in their follow-up survey.  Only opportunities with the ability to follow-up with volunteers will be included, to maintain the credibility of the BEC and NEM programs.
• ORTOP FLL and FTC
• Saturday Academy
• NWSE Judging
• Intel re-funded the Technoscience Supersite at its current maintenance level.  No update requests came in from NOISE.
• ETIC has a Computer Science Task Force whose interests and activities abut or overlap with Motivate Workgroup’s.
• There is an ad hoc marketing group, primarily for ETIC but their passion is marketing to K12.  Bruce is leaning towards formalizing the group as an OPAS Committee. (Jo notes that subsequently the group was formalized as an ETIC committee, both to spread the staff load and to support ETIC Chair Fred Ziari’s vision.)

Next Meeting:  Friday, May 2, 3:30 – 5:00 at the Capital Center and via teleconference

Respectfully submitted, Jo Oshiro, May 1, 2008 and posted May 2, 2008

Agenda - #11 - February 14, 2008

• 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.

• 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 –
• ETIC match for $10K to match head football/basketball coach
  • Head $6-8K
  • Assistant $3-4K
  • Under proposed matching, year 1 cost is $12K
    • ETIC match year 1 = $8K
    • ETIC match year 2 - $4K
• Equipment scholarships - $3,000 per team
• Targets:
  • Stipends: 30 schools in the first year (2009-2010, $150K); similar numbers for second year with yet-to-be-detailed district matching to phase out ETIC funding.
  • Estimate 20 students/ school
  • 50 school-based teams for FIRST Tech Challenge =>$150
  • Assume 50 non-school based teams
  • Need admin/event costs for a 100-team FTC tournament under ORTOP
• Contact hours per student per year estimate ~ 175 hours per student per year.

• Volunteer Engagement (Ben)
• The volunteer survey is again under review; we hope to polish it and publish it so that Intel Retirees, perhaps ORTOP, and NEM volunteers may be surveyed.
• Ben will work on connecting with IEEE and the Hillsboro Chamber of Commerce.
• Business Engagement (Jo for Mary Beth Horton)
• The BEC is actively working on NEM tools to support engineers as speakers in the classroom; Stephanie Lambert has taken the lead on this.  While a good start has been made, this will be a multi-year effort.  The process of developing the grant proposal for ETIC resulted in a vision that jazzes the BEC, and for which they intend to pursue full funding.  OPAS has provided some useful connections, links, and feedback to this effort.
• The BEC’s partnership with IEEE continues to develop; they will help in developing NEM tools.
• Don Domes needs to follow up with the Hillsboro School District Superintendent about the teacher sabbatical pilot program he has discussed with the BEC; no grant requests should be necessary.
• NOISE (Jo)
• The TechnoScienceSupersite (TSS) email to the NOISE_members listserv has generated no response.  Jo and Ben will collaborate to crosscheck the NOISE photoroster against the listserv and the TSS and send out targeted emails to encourage NOISE members to make sure their programs are on the TSS.  The email should come from Jo.
• Jo will contact Amanda Thomas at OMSI to followup on NOISE homepage issues; previous emails have not resulted in effective activity.

• Starts concretely with what is working – PLTW, ORTOP
• Efficiency of applying resources to the work
• Better packaged for selling to the legislature than the four separate concepts previously discussed, although many parts of those concepts are included in this vision

• What is meant by CS needs really thorough clarification.
• Lower-grade in-class programs are missing from the slides.
• Skills (such as critical thinking) need to be made more explicit

• Volunteers: 
  • We will re-focus on the survey; Ben and Jo will talk with OMSI’s evaluation department.  We would like to use this survey on the retiree population.
  • Ben is working on bringing Intel retirees into the fold through Intel, through BEC, and through work at Hilhi.  The new web design class has a group of “client” Intel retirees who are specifying a class project – a website for the Intel retirees.  The retirees are doing additional work with the class, and supporting the new CS teacher, Steve Nelson in his first year of teaching.
  • Ben will connect ORTOP via Ron Dilbeck to IEEE.
• Business:
  • Dacia Ermatinger is no longer with the Hillsboro Chamber of Commerce School to Work program.  Ben will try contacting Julie Wilson or Deanna Palm at the Chamber.
  • The BEC expects to resolve staffing and email SPAM/legitimation issues with some help from Jo’s lists and send out an input form to the NOISE_members listserv by November 1.
  • The BEC is working on adding more lesson and teaching support, such as behavioral expectations by age/grade for guest engineers.  Jo will offer some of her collection of weblinks (done); Ryan will touch base with Stephanie Lambert of the BEC to see if he can easily share other resources.
    • We need a new metaphor for taking things apart in the garage, as many fewer kids today have that experience.
    • We need to highlight the social nature of problems, solutions, and the social nature of the work.  Engineering always takes place within the context of a civilization.
• NOISE:
  • Something needs to be done, even if the activity is contrived.
  • Lynn Dierking of OSU might be a possible champion, or have some insight.  Ben will contact her.
• Other:
  • We have an IEEE article on Design Squad and other Intel Education activities; unfortunately ORTOP is not mentioned.  Jo will distribute this to the wider OPAS community.
  • Jo will get a Techstart Gala invite out to the wider OPAS community (done).
  • Di Saunders, Director of Communications for OUS will be working on a marketing campaign to reach business and professional groups about ETIC’s and OPAS’ activities, priorities, data and results.
  • The steering committee continues to solicit input on legislative priorities; discussion of STEM centers from the last Motivate workgroup meeting has been folded in to the current brainstorming document.
  • Jo will poll for a possible meeting on November 14; preliminary indications are that rescheduling may be necessary.

last update to this page July 17, 2007 jco