Faculty from the Purdue Polytechnic, College of Engineering, and College of Education will train over 115 Indiana educators to bring microelectronics and semiconductor concepts into their K-12 classrooms.
The training will take place during the annual SCALE K-12 workshop, to be held July 6-9 in the Wilmeth Active Learning Center at Purdue University.
Greg Strimel, an associate professor in the School of Engineering Technology within Purdue Polytechnic, serves as the deputy program director for the initiative. He will help lead many of the planned activities during the five-day event alongside his colleagues from Purdue's College of Education and the College of Engineering.
The SCALE K-12 initiative addresses the national demand for a skilled microelectronics workforce. The program equips educators with specialized curriculum designed to build technical skills and engineering design mindsets in students from elementary through high school.
The summer workshop will provide hands-on training for the microelectronics-integrated curriculum units developed through the SCALE K-12 initiative. Teachers will engage directly with physical computing tools and learn to troubleshoot hardware and software systems.
The workshop will also host a wide variety of breakout sessions-for instance, instructing educators on using a computer numerical control (CNC) router to create printed circuit boards (PCBs) for functional electronic devices. Participants will prepare PCB designs, set up the router and safely mill working circuit boards.
The workshop also features sessions on empowering students to explore high-demand careers in microelectronics and utilizing units designed to bring hands-on learning experiences directly to classrooms.
Purdue Polytechnic's support of the SCALE K-12 program builds upon the college's ongoing commitment to statewide workforce development. Strimel and his colleagues recently secured a $1.99 million National Science Foundation grant through the Noyce Microelectronics Master Teacher Fellowship Program, which further expands microelectronics integration into Indiana school districts.
Additional information
