14 The Agnes Irwin School Magazine :: Spring 2013

Engineers take what they know about the world and use that knowledge to solve a problem. There’s nothing mysterious

about it, and there are many different ways to be an engineer, as Michele Grab, director of the University of Pennsylvania’s Advancing Women in Engineering (AWE) program, explained to Agnes Irwin fifth graders when they spent the day at Penn’s School of Engineering and Applied Science in January. AWE strives to encourage more women to join a field that is still overwhelmingly dominated by men. Women make up approximately 30% of the Penn Engineering freshman class each year. The national average is 20%.

“Middle school is the age where girls – even those who are performing well in math and science–start to lose

interest,” said Grab. Keeping girls in that age range excited about science and math is key to encouraging a larger number of them to consider engineering careers. “Most kids don’t know what engineering is. That seems to disproportionately affect girls. The number-one reason anyone chooses engineering is that someone tells them to,” she said.

The Agnes Irwin Middle School has embraced the challenge of keeping girls engaged in science and math by introducing engineering concepts into the science curriculum and by looking at ways to weave spatial reasoning – an important tool in science and technology – into the broader curriculum.

In Jennifer White’s science class this year, fifth graders are delving straight into Engineering is Elementary® (EiE),

a curricular project developed by the Museum of Science in Boston that integrates engineering and technology concepts and skills into elementary science topics. The unit began with an exploration of industrial engineering, where students learned about the “six simple machines” (lever, wheel and axle, pulley, wedge, incline plane, screw) that are the primary tools found in even the most complex machines. Students were taught the engineering design process (ASK – IMAGINE – PLAN – CREATE – IMPROVE) used in all fields of engineering. Students then applied the design process to creating a model of a factory subsystem, using at least two of the simple machines. Their goal was to design an improved subsystem for moving a “load” (in this case, a water bottle) six feet across the “factory

:: Sixth graders Libby McNeil (left), Kate Kepp and Acacia Pressley present their water system prototype to classmates.

Training Problem Solvers

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floor” (the classroom floor) and three feet up onto the “loading dock” (the counter top).

When the fifth graders spent the day at Penn’s School of Engineering as part of the unit, it was clear that they had already acquired some understanding of engineering and were able to articulately respond to questions about the engineering process. What they perhaps had not yet grasped was how many different fields of engineering there are and how much impact an engineer can have on the world.

Grab had very intentionally structured the day’s program to let the girls see how exciting science and technology can be. Touring the Robotics Department, the students

learned about advances in medical technology through the use of robotics. “The girls gained an appreciation of how engineers can design tools that improve people’s lives,” said fifth grade teacher White.

For the second part of the trip to Penn, members of the Society of Women in Engineering (SWE) – a national organization with collegiate chapters – engaged the fifth graders in a competition, where each table had to build a “pasta tower” using only gumdrops and uncooked spaghetti, with the tallest structure winning. The fifth graders were given an opportunity to pause and reflect on what was working or not working, and refine their structures accordingly. On the surface a fun and messy activity into which the girls threw themselves, the contest incorporated several engineering

fundamentals, including teamwork, problem solving, the importance of the “IMPROVE” phase of the engineering process, and spatial reasoning.

Spatial reasoning is a valuable skill that can be developed. Middle School Director Lynne Myavec explained that for the past several years, the Middle School has sought to integrate quantitative reasoning into all subjects–getting students to think about proportion, scale, sequence and quantity. This year, the Middle School has added a focus on spatial reasoning.

In the fall, before students returned to school, Middle School faculty participated in a workshop of their own. Divided into groups, faculty members were asked to represent abstract concepts (joy, harmony,

community, for example) in a three- dimensional form. A nice way to connect with colleagues old and new, the activity also got them thinking about how they might integrate spatial reasoning into their classrooms.

Embracing the challenge, art teacher Keri Farrow began the year with a fifth grade art project that involved both spatial reasoning and teamwork. The girls, divided into groups, observed the Campus Improvements Project construction work through the classroom window. Farrow asked them to build a three-dimensional structure out of tape and newspaper – either abstract or representational – as a response to what they saw. The piece had to be free standing and balanced, with all its component parts interconnected. Farrow told the students that the foundations of a structure had to be strong and that when working as a group, “every move affects the next move.”

“The piece that one student puts in

place will have to support the piece that the next student puts in place,” she explained.

Learning to work in a group is a critical part of the Agnes Irwin experience, and students who have

BY CLARE LUZURIAGA

Engineering and 3-D Design in the Middle School

:: Audrey McGrory ’20 and Cheney Williams ’20, working on their construction sculpture in Keri Farrow’s art class.

Training Problem Solvers

16 The Agnes Irwin School Magazine :: Spring 2013

become accustomed to communicating, collaborating and negotiating within a group are at an advantage as they move into the Upper School, said Myavec.

“Learning to collaborate with others and connect through technology are essential skills in a knowledge-based economy,” according to the results of AC21S, a project based at the University of Melbourne and including more than 250 researchers across 60 institutions worldwide that has identified and categorized 21st century skills.

In Leslie Hahne’s sixth grade science class, students are often required to work in groups to solve a problem. The underlying theme of her curriculum is systems – ecosystems, the cell as a system, the skeletomuscular system, and the digestive system. The focus on systems ties together distinct units while providing an innovative way to incorporate engineering concepts into the curriculum. The school year began with the ecosystems unit, the initial focus of which was water use. Hahne had the students look at how water is used at school and in their homes. She tasked them with designing a method to determine how many gallons of water they use in their showers. Students were then divided into groups and had to identify a specific problem related to water gathering that might affect people in a rural area–the problem could be anything from lack of footwear for walking long distances to

contaminated water. The groups built a prototype, using repurposed material, as a response to that problem. The groups then presented their solution to the class, first identifying the problem addressed, then demonstrating how their prototype worked, before fielding questions from the rest of the class.

Another prime example of a creative, student-directed problem- solving activity is Project VOFMIO, the culminating project for eighth grade science. Students are tasked with designing the first “off-Earth settlement on a recently discovered, amazingly Earth-like planet” of

VOFMIO. Developed by Interim Science Department Chair Jennifer Hoffman and science teacher Nicole Vishio, Project VOFMIO is in its sixth year. The focus is on sustainability. Each student is assigned a role as a specialist in water resources, sustainable agriculture, renewable energy or waste management for one of four colonies on VOFMIO with specific climates similar to those found on earth. Students are then put into groups consisting of all the specialists for that colony, and the group has to figure out how each specialist’s approaches and suggestions take into consideration those of the other specialists. For example, how will the proposed water resource management of that colony affect the food production?

Each group then constructs a three-dimensional representation of its colony from recycled items. The unit culminates in a 45-minute presentation to the class – involving images, graphics and video clips – where the group explains the details of the community design, including how the colony uses natural resources sustainably, and how the different specialists’ areas function as a whole.

Gaining some familiarity with computer programming while in school gives future engineers another strong advantage. Art teacher Jennifer Brittingham and Upper School science teacher Steven Grabania have joined forces to

:: An eighth grade VOFMIO model landscape at last year’s Middle School Science Symposium.

:: Rebecca Pierce, Ph.D. student in Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mechanics, shows students how a haptic device works.

:: Recent graduate Ian McMahon introduces students to Graspy, a PR2 robot programmed to fist bump and high five.

:: Students in the GRASP Multi-Robot Systems Lab observing a flying robot demonstration.

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introduce computer science to seventh grade art class. Students will learn “Alice,” a user-friendly programming language developed at Carnegie Mellon University that lets students create three dimensional computer animations using the drag-and-drop interface. Those steps are then translated into object-oriented programming languages such as Java and Python. Students concentrate on making movies and games, but they also learn to program. “We think this program will help make the transition into the Upper School computer science course easier as well as generate more interest in

computer science as a whole,” said Brittingham.With such approaches to learning, the Middle School

curriculum makes science, math and technology more interesting and hands-on for all students and develops valuable collaborative problem solving skills, while providing a strong foundation for girls who might be interested in pursuing engineering, science, math or technology as they move into the Upper School and beyond. It puts into place practices and skills that will be beneficial to most students in any future careers.

:: Katherine Kuchenbecker, Skirkanich Assistant Professor of Innovation in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mechanics, stops in to meet the fifth graders and take a look at their pasta towers.

:: As a group, the students play a video game controlled by their arm movements in Penn’s SIG Center for Computer Graphics.

Kristen Ford ’09 has always loved math and science. In school, she enjoyed lab experiments and embraced any science or math challenge as a “cool puzzle.” A career in engineering was something she was drawn toward at an early stage. It was the problem-solving aspect of engineering that particularly appealed to her. In middle school, she won a “Future Engineer” award. She also won an award at her church for the tutoring she provided to other children in math.

Ford enrolled at AIS in eighth grade, and, in the Upper School, she joined the Robotics team. She laughingly described being advised at the time by friends that it was a “nerdy” activity. Her enthusiasm for robotics led her to study mechanical engineering as an undergraduate at Tufts University. When she began at Tufts, she was assigned a “big sister” in the Engineering Department to help her transition to life at college. Her big sister was a human factors engineering major, and she inspired Ford to find out more about the field. She discovered that it was the ideal branch of engineering for her, combining technical knowledge with an interest in people, and she became a human factors engineering major.

Mechanic engineering, explained Ford, “is about how things work.” In a car, for example, the design of the engine falls under mechanical engineering. Human factors engineering is about “not only making things work but knowing the user well enough to make it work for them.” Human factors engineering involves the car parts that people interact with – the steering wheel, the seat, the pedals. The Toyota Camry, said Ford, was targeted toward women drivers, so the height of the average female was factored into the design of the steering wheel.

Graduating in May 2013, she already has a job lined up at The Mitre Corporation in Bedford, MA, a non-profit organization that provides systems engineering and advanced technology expertise to the government. Ford’s position will be user-interface and user-experience designer. She will be on the human systems integration team at Mitre. The other teams, she explained, come to her team to see how the system they are developing integrates the user.

Her advice for future women engineers is to make sure they get some experience with programming while they are still at school. “It doesn’t need to be any specific programming language necessarily, just an introduction to that type of thinking,” said Ford. Programming is a critical part of any engineering field.

Ford also stressed the importance of perseverance and discipline in engineering. She credits her parents with instilling in her a sense of discipline. When she started at college, she found a few of the classes were tough, but she worked hard and moved forward successfully.

Engineering Role Model