We have successfully finished our summer program in our National Science Foundation (NSF) supported Research Experiences for Teachers (RET) Site entitled “Enriching the Professional Development of School Teachers & Community College Faculty in Rural Michigan - An RET Site on Smart Vehicles.” The summer program was six weeks long and hosted five community college faculty, five in-service teachers (high school science) and five pre-service teachers (integrated science majors). Participants are split into five groups and teamed up with an engineering faculty and an engineering undergraduate student each. During their 40 hours/week work schedule, participants have worked on faculty-supervised research projects for 25 hours/week and the rest was reserved for classroom unit plans that participants would work on developing.
This paper presents details about the RET Site’s management and discusses our experiences from lessons learned. Preliminary assessment results will be presented and discussed. Finally, we will conclude with the overall lessons we learned from this experience and discuss next summer’s plans as a result of our analysis and self-reflections.
Kumar Yelamarthi received his Ph.D. and M.S degree from Wright State University in 2008 and 2004, and B.E. from University of Madras, India in 2000. He is currently the Assistant Director for the School of Engineering and Technology, and Professor of Electrical & Computer Engineering and at Central Michigan University (CMU). He serves as the chair for Electrical Engineering and Computer Engineering programs at CMU. His research interest is in the areas of wireless sensor networks, Internet of Things, assistive devices, mobile robots, embedded systems, and engineering education. He has published over 140 articles in archival journals and conference proceedings and delivered over 75 talks in these areas. He has served as a chair, technical program committee chair, treasurer for several IEEE/ASME/ASEE international conferences, and as a reviewer and panelist for numerous externally funded proposals. He served as the general chair for 2016 ASEE NCS Conference, 2011 ASEE NCS conference, Technical Committee Member for IEEE ISVLSI, IEEE MWSCAS, IEEE WF-IoT, and currently serves on the editorial board for International Journal of Forensic Software Engineering. He has served as the Chair of IEEE Northeast Michigan Section, and vice-chair for ASEE North Central Section. He served as PI, co-PI, and senior personnel in several externally funded grants from organizations such as NSF, NASA, and the regional industry. He is a founding advisor for the IEEE Student Chapter at CMU, an elected member of Tau Beta Pi engineering honor society, Omicron Delta Kappa national leadership honor society, a senior member of IEEE, and a senior member of IETI.
Brian P. DeJong is an Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering in the School of Engineering and Technology at Central Michigan University. He is a recipient of the university's College of Science & Technology Outstanding Teaching Award. He received a M.S. and Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from Northwestern University with research in robotics. His current research is in mobile robots (spherical, sound-localization), teleoperation (improved interfaces), and engineering education.
Dr. Tolga Kaya currently is an Associate Professor and Director of Engineering in the School of Computer Science and Engineering at Sacred Heart University (SHU). Prior to joining SHU, Dr. Kaya was an Associate Professor at Central Michigan University's School of Engineering and Technology (2010-2017). Dr. Kaya was a post-doctorate associate at Yale University (2007-2010), a research and teaching assistant at ITU in Turkey (1999-2007), a consultant at Brightwell Corp. (2007), Istanbul, a senior VLSI analog design engineer and project coordinator at Microelectronics R&D Company, Istanbul (2000-2006), and a visiting assistant in research at Yale University (2004-2005). Dr. Tolga Kaya received BS, MS and PhD degrees in Electronics Engineering from Istanbul Technical University (ITU), Istanbul, Turkey.
His research interests in electrical/computer engineering and applied sciences are physiological sensors and systems. Dr. Kaya also works on engineering education, particularly STEM relationships with K-12 and active learning techniques.
Dr. Ahmed Abdelgawad received his M.S. and a Ph.D. degree in Computer Engineering from University of Louisiana at Lafayette in 2007 and 2011 and subsequently joined IBM as a Design Aids & Automation Engineering Professional at Semiconductor Research and Development Center. In Fall 2012 he joined Central Michigan University as a Computer Engineering Assistant Professor. In Fall 2017, Dr. Abdelgawad was early promoted as a Computer Engineering Associate Professor. He is a senior member of IEEE. His area of expertise is distributed computing for Wireless Sensor Network (WSN), Internet of Things (IoT), Structural Health Monitoring (SHM), data fusion techniques for WSN, low power embedded system, video processing, digital signal processing, Robotics, RFID, Localization, VLSI, and FPGA design. He has published two books and more than 80 articles in related journals and conferences. Dr. Abdelgawad served as a reviewer for several conferences and journals, including IEEE WF-IoT, IEEE ISCAS, IEEE SAS, IEEE IoT Journal, IEEE Communications Magazine, Springer, Elsevier, IEEE Transactions on VLSI, and IEEE Transactions on I&M. He severed in the technical committees of IEEE ISCAS 2007/8 and IEEE ICIP 2009 conferences. He served in the administration committee of IEEE SiPS 2011. He also served in the organizing committee of ICECS2013 and 2015. Dr. Abdelgawad was the publicity chair in North America of the IEEE WF-IoT 2016/18/19 conferences. He was the finance chair of the IEEE ICASSP 2017. He is the TPC Co-Chair of I3C'17, the TPC Co-Chair of GIoTS 2017, and the technical program chair of IEEE MWSCAS 2018. He is the technical program chair of IEEE WF-IoT 2020. He delivered many tutorials in international conferences including IEEE SOCC, IEEE MWSCAS, IEEE SiPS, and APCCAS. In addition, he taught many short IoT courses in different countries. He was the keynote speaker for many international conferences and conducted many webinars. He is currently the IEEE Northeast Michigan section chair and IEEE SPS Internet of Things (IoT) SIG Member. In addition, Dr. Abdelgawad served as a PI and Co-PI for several funded grants from NSF.
Dr. Ishraq Shabib holds a B.Sc in mechanical engineering from Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology. He received his M.Sc. and Ph.D. both in Mechanical Engineering from Carleton University, Canada. After his Ph.D., he worked for two years as a post-doctoral visiting fellow at CANMET research laboratory of Natural Resources of Canada. In 2011, he joined the department of mechanical engineering at the University of Texas at El Paso as a research assistant professor. Since 2013, he has been serving the school of engineering and technology of Central Michigan University as an assistant professor. His research interest includes deformation of crystalline nanostructures, radiation induced damage of materials, defect structure and property relationship, and atomistic & multiscale modeling.
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