John Monahan - US grants

This fellowship award will support study of the Japanese language by an American scientist or engineer by providing a stipend, tuition, and other course-related expenses. The objectives of the fellowships are to enable active U.S. scientists and engineers to acquire sufficient familiarity with the language and customs of Japan to allow them to function independently there; or to acquire sufficient expertise in reading Japanese to be able to understand technical abstracts in their field of interest. There is a critical need for more effective technical communication between American and Japanese researchers. This award is intended to help remove language and cultural barriers to U.S.-Japanese cooperative research and to facilitate science and technology exchange.

Undergraduate students in two research methods courses are being provided with a computer lab to give them direct exposure to research methods. The computer lab is used by research design students to simulate experiments that illustrate fundamental design principles. The lab is used by research applications students to perform replications of some important recent experiments in a number of fields of psychology, and to select individual final experiments from a large number of studies already in the literature or to create variations of those studies. The equipment consists of a network of 12 stations and a controller/file server as well as additional hardware and software to conduct and simulate the experiments. Undergraduates can gain hands-on experience with some of the most important psychological experiments while learning the principles of research and research design. This should help them learn problem solving and probabilistic reasoning as well. Students should learn more and be more enthusiastic about research as a result of using this lab. The university will contribute an amount equal to the award.

The project, "The Modern Blanket Toss," refers to a Native American blanket toss, in which an Eskimo Indian is bounced upward from a blanket held tautly by a group of other Eskimos in order to allow the central Eskimo to scout the environment. The blanket serves as a trampoline to allow the scout to gain greater knowledge of the environment. Implemented as a metaphor in this project, the Modern Blanket Toss is the use of an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) as a tool to help young Alaskan Natives gain an understanding of their environment and to further their knowledge of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM). The project serves rural populations and Alaskan Natives through the use of technology that can directly improve Alaskans? awareness of their environment and its changes: UAVs and geographic information systems (GIS) technology.

Intellectual Merit
The project aims is to demonstrate a three-part program of science education built around cutting-edge STEM technologies, science communication and leadership skills, and community involvement. Its goal is to better expose rural and Alaskan Native students to STEM careers, prepare them for higher education, and enable them to contribute to their communities. The project is based on current educational research demonstrating the need to integrate traditional classroom instruction with activities designed to turn knowledge into action. The program combines cybertechnology, small-group and hands-on instruction, and innovative concepts of community engagement. The project partners with Upward Bound, a US Department of Education program with the proven ability to propel high school students into college, and leverages that success to focus on the specific goal of increasing student interest in STEM majors and careers. The project also includes teacher professional development for rural high school teachers. A thorough evaluation ensures that results from the program are tracked with scientific rigor. Given Alaska?s pressing need for mapping and environmental monitoring, engaging high school students in UAV projects significantly increased the state?s GIS datasets as the students themselves move into STEM careers.

Broader Impacts
The Modern Blanket Toss project is designed to directly improve the 60 participating students' interest in STEM fields, expanding their horizons like the ancient Inuit practice from which the project draws its name. It is also transferable and scalable for broad application in Upward Bound programs across the US. A key product is a curriculum and video series detailing the program's strategies to increase STEM engagement in underserved populations. Though these products address programs that focus on UAVs, they can potentially encompass a much broader educational strategy in which any number of science activities could substitute for UAV education. Results are to be widely disseminated through both Alaska's Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR) network and Upward Bound media and events, including a national workshop held at the conclusion of the award period.

Non-technical Description
As the need and demand for technically skilled workforce increases to meet the technical advances of the 21st century life, it is important to attract and sustain the interest of youth, especially those from groups that are traditionally underrepresented in the fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). This award from the Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR) aims to engage pre-college students from under-represented minority groups as well as prospective first-generation college students in an after-school and intensive summer programs and train them in three emerging technologies - unmanned aerial systems (UAS), 3-D printers, and code-able digital devices. The "Teaching through Technologies (T3) Alliance" program will recruit instructors and students from the nationally well-established Upward Bound sites and provide them the needed online and in-person support to adopt a curriculum detailing the scientific background and hands-on use of these three technologies. In addition to the technological instruction, students will also receive instruction in STEM communication and leadership and will participate in a team or individual service project in which their new skills can be used to address and solve an issue of relevance to their local community using the acquired technical knowledge. Over the three years of the project, it is expected that 360 or more underrepresented minority, low-income, and first-generation-to-college students from 36 institutions of higher education in 18 EPSCoR jurisdictions will be engaged in this project.
Technical Description
The vision of this project called, "Teaching through Technologies (T3) Alliance," is to provide a replicable, adaptable, and scalable curriculum and a comprehensive support mechanism that can be widely adopted to increase the STEM interest and engagement of high school students from underrepresented minority groups. The project will focus on three emerging technological areas related to unmanned aerial systems, 3-D printers, and codeable digital devices. Course content, instruction, and robust interactive communication will enable instructors and students to: 1) exchange current activities and ideas across sites; 2) collaborate on problem-solving challenges; 3) discover STEM fields and career paths; 4) access robust instructor training and support; and 5) establish two- way communication with STEM career professionals and societies. The program will be led by Alaska Upward Bound program with close partnership with the Council for Opportunity in Education, Educating4Leadership, and Thrive Design Enterprises in Alaska. The project plans to engage 36 Upward Bound sites in 18 EPSCoR jurisdictions. By engaging the students in hands-on technical learning and enabling them to apply this knowledge in a service project of relevance to their communities, the project will encourage the students to further pursue STEM study and careers.