Scott Campbell, professor of chemical engineering

Scott Campbell, a professor in the Department of Chemical & Biomedical Engineering, has been active in four STEM education/outreach projects over the past several years. It so happened that all of them reached a point that they could be reported on about the time of the 2019 ASEE Annual Conference and Exposition in Tampa.

Scott made three presentations at the conference. One was a platform presentation in the Mathematics Division and two were poster presentations in the NSF Grantees Poster Session. He was also a co-author on a platform presentation made by Professor Sylvia Thomas in a Pre-College Engineering Education session at the conference.

Scott’s platform presentation described the Modeling and Analysis of Engineering Systems course taught at USF by Scott and Professor Carlos Smith. Carlos and Scott developed the course as a replacement for the traditional Differential Equations course taken by engineering students at USF. The Modeling and Analysis course covers analytical solutions to differential equations. However, the equations are developed in the context of modeling physical systems so that students also gain exposure to mathematical modeling of electrical circuits, mechanical systems, and thermal systems. In addition, students are exposed to the basics of numerical solutions, followed using commercial software for solving coupled differential equations numerically. The bulk of the presentation examined comparisons between students who took the course and those who took Differential Equations. Results indicate that students who take Modeling and Analysis have short-term advantages over their counterparts who took Differential Equations. Interested readers can find the paper here.

Dr. Scott Campbell presenting a paper at the ASEE Conference and Exposition held in Tampa in June 2019.

Scott’s first poster in the NSF Grantees session described the Research Experiences for Teachers program in Functional Materials and Manufacturing at USF. This program, administered by Scott and Professors Venkat Bhethanabotla and Sylvia Thomas, invites up to 10 high school and community college STEM teachers each summer to the College of Engineering to work on faculty-mentored research and to prepare relevant lesson plans for their students. The notion is that participating teachers will be excited by their summer research and will translate that excitement to their students during the academic year. Since summer 2015, twenty-nine high school or community college STEM teachers (many of whom participated for two years) have worked under the supervision of engineering and science faculty on authentic research related to functional materials – with applications to catalysis, separations, sensing, materials processing, electrospinning, and 3D printing. During the summer, participants work on their research, take a course in the fundamentals of materials science, and prepare a lesson plan for their students. At the end of the summer, they present their research at the Annual REU/RET Symposium and their lesson plans to teachers from Hillsborough County Schools and USF, before implementing them in their classrooms. Lesson plans and research posters are housed in the Material College program website.

Scott’s second poster described the STEER program at USF. This NSF-IUSE funded project (2015-20) is headed by Dr. Gerry Meisels, the Director of the Coalition for Science Literacy at USF. STEER (Systematic Transformation of Evidence-based Educational Reform) has multiple thrusts for improving STEM education at USF. It provides funding for faculty who wish to implement active learning methods (for instance, clickers, guided learning, flipped classrooms) and travel grants to faculty who wish to attend conferences to learn about evidence-based teaching. It funds “STEER Peers”; USF students who formerly transferred from Hillsborough Community College and now mentor students who are in the transfer process. STEER also attends departmental retreats to describe and demonstrate active learning techniques to faculty. It hosts interdisciplinary retreats that connect faculty in different departments with the goal of dovetailing content between different STEM courses and disciplines. The program also sponsors a peer observation program, advocates to the Provost for facilities and policies that enhance STEM education, provides awards to faculty who have demonstrated effective STEM teaching and holds a seminar series in which nationally known experts discuss various aspects of STEM education including content, curricula, administration, community college transfers, and inclusion. A paper written about the program for the ASEE conference is here.

In a Pre-College Engineering Education session of the ASEE conference, Sylvia Thomas presented a description of the capstone course in the Helios Middle School Science and Mathematics program at USF, which she and Scott teach. The goal of this program is to produce graduates who can find immediate success as middle school science and math teachers. The program includes both content and pedagogy courses and has a strong residency program, in which students spend a semester teaching in a local middle school under the mentorship of an in-practice teacher. The goal of the capstone course is for students to gain an appreciation of integrated STEM teaching, with a particular focus on the engineering design process. While taking the class, students work through an existing example of an integrated STEM lesson, are provided a workshop on developing such plans, and then work in groups to develop their own integrated STEM lesson. Feedback from students indicates that they enter the class with some trepidation about working outside their discipline but complete the course believing that developing integrated lessons is not as difficult as they expected and that it is possible to develop an engaging lesson that still addresses state education standards. Interested readers can find the paper here.