NSF Awards: 1849430, 2120746
The primary goal of Engineering for US All (e4usa) is to demystify and democratize the learning and practice of engineering by engaging high school students and teachers in a project-based engineering curriculum. e4usa increases engineering literacy for all and expands opportunities for those traditionally underserved and underrepresented in engineering to pursue careers as engineers and expand the STEM workforce pipeline. e4usa has created the e4usa curriculum, teacher professional learning (e.g., professional development workshops and community of practice), and additional supporting resources (e.g., MyDesign®). The overall e4usa program has been field tested in 19 states, the US Virgin Islands, and the District of Columbia by 54 teachers educating approximately 5,000 students to date. Knowledge gained from our research is informing central components of e4usa intended to improve developed curriculum and teacher professional learning, expand partnerships, garner insights into the impacts of e4usa, and increase pathways for credit and placement. The knowledge taught by empowered teachers provides a broader understanding of engineering intended to excite an interest in pursuing additional engineering education. Specific efforts to collaborate with a diverse group of schools (urban, suburban, rural, private, public, parochial, single gender, etc.) ensures that this program reaches those who have previously been unable to offer engineering and/or traditionally underrepresented in engineering.
Stacy Klein-Gardner
Adjunct Professor
Welcome to Engineering for US All (e4usa)! Engineering for US All (e4usa) is a first-of-its-kind, national initiative designed to introduce engineering design principles to a new generation of students. e4usa invites all schools, teachers, and students to fully participate, regardless of their technical background or preparation. e4usa seeks to demystify and democratize engineering.
Jacqueline Ekeoba
Lynette Moore
Although I ended up in engineering, I wish my high school would have had a program like this! I had no engineering role models in my life, and had no idea how wonderful a career in this field would be.
Jackelyn Lopez Roshwalb
Stacy Klein-Gardner
Jackelyn Lopez Roshwalb
Senior Lecturer
I am glad to hear that you ended up in engineering despite not having had a program like this or engineering role models. Can you please share what did help bring you to the field?
April Jubett
Yes, engineering is everywhere!!
Jackelyn Lopez Roshwalb
Stacy Klein-Gardner
Adjunct Professor
So true. We love the opportunity for our e4usa students to realize just that in our first unit. In one lesson, students think about what they think they might want to be when they grow up and then research how engineering impacts that job.
Daniel Serrano
I love this project. I'm very curious about the stage of idea formation.
What approaches/techniques/exercises/activities do you implement at the stage in which students are developing their ideas?
Would love to hear details about this if you have these resources available online, in discussion, or by email.
Stacy Klein-Gardner
Jackelyn Lopez Roshwalb
Stacy Klein-Gardner
Adjunct Professor
As you might guess, one technique we talk about is just good old fashioned brain-storming where you go for quantity not quality. Easy adaptations or additions to that are doing it anonymously or starting with individual brainstorming before melding with a team. We teach hybridizing later in the curriculum. We also try adding a seemingly random constraint to see how that tweaks people's ideas. Last one I'll mention is the pass technique where one person starts and idea and passes it to the next where they add on to it - and so it grows.
What other ideation techniques might you suggest for us? We're actually working on a video script on this topic now!
Jackelyn Lopez Roshwalb
Senior Lecturer
Another technique to try once brainstorming starts to fizzle out is to clearly define the function of each idea a team has come up with so far. For example, if one of the team's ideas is a wearable light, the team could consider alternatives to the wearable part of the idea (e.g. instead of wearing something it could clip onto a backpack) and alternatives to the light part of the idea (instead of using light indicators, it could have sound indicators). This can lead to a whole slew of new ideas, which is our goal with ideation!
Daniel Serrano
Thanks for the examples, Stacy and Jackelyn.
Beyond the techniques you use, we also like implementing the concept of remixing into idea formation, which we think is pretty relevant in our program since our focus is research experiment design, so it's important to understand and know how to harness existing findings and techniques.
Stacy Klein-Gardner
Adjunct Professor
Couldn't agree more. Our Engineering Design Process Portfolio Scoring Rubric (EDPPSR) helps teachers frame this important step of not only finding prior solutions, but also analyzing how they do and do not meet the criteria and constraints for the current problem at hand. This research takes place prior to ideation.
Donna Stokes
Wow! This program is touching students around the country. Great program!
Jackelyn Lopez Roshwalb
Stacy Klein-Gardner
Mariam Manuel
I am so excited about this project! I taught an engineering design course that included an invention unit. Definitely following the work you are doing to learn more!
Jackelyn Lopez Roshwalb
Stacy Klein-Gardner
Jackelyn Lopez Roshwalb
Senior Lecturer
Thank you for sharing this! I'd like to learn more about your experience teaching engineering design. What aspects of the invention unit did you and your students particularly enjoy?
Nancy Hopkins-Evans
Senior Director
Love the idea of engineering for us all and that teachers of any content area were able and encouraged to teach the course with a focus on students building inventions that are useable. I especially liked the diverse students and places that were shown in the video. Do you know of schools who have adopted the course and are offering for credit? Have any of the students who have taken the course expressed interest in majoring in engineering in college? What have been the biggest learnings for students and teachers?
Jackelyn Lopez Roshwalb
Stacy Klein-Gardner
Stacy Klein-Gardner
Adjunct Professor
This year we have 50 schools in 19 states + DC and USVI who are offering the course for high school credit. We're growing next year as part of our research grant. (We still have room for a few more if anyone wants to join!). Absolutely, students have expressed interest in or actually gone on to major in engineering. That's our newest study - trying to track them over time. We also have some research in progress around engineering identity.
Nancy Hopkins-Evans
Stacy Klein-Gardner
Adjunct Professor
A few publications on what we've learned about teachers:
When a Pandemic Requires a Pivot in the Modality of Teacher Professional Development
Initial Investigation of Effective Teacher Professional Development Among Experienced and Non-experienced Engineering Teachers
Understanding the ‘us all’ in Engineering 4 Us All through the Experiences of High School Teachers
Nancy Hopkins-Evans
Jackelyn Lopez Roshwalb
Senior Lecturer
I'd also like to share about the pathways for high school students who have taken e4usa to earn college credit at 7 institutions of higher education, which we are working to expand! https://e4usa.org/families
Nancy Hopkins-Evans
Bryan Langford
What an amazing program! Well done! I am so excited to see the engagement of students who may have never considered these options without this exposure.
Jackelyn Lopez Roshwalb
Stacy Klein-Gardner
Richard Maxwell
e4USA is that rare gift when there is something that can not only change the perspective of students, but also teachers. The possibilities are quite literally endless. The "e" stands for engineering, but it really is so much more. As an exploratory course, one could make a strong case for it being a kind of life-skills class. Problem solving, harnessing creativity, learning how to better collaborate, developing accountability. Sure, it's facilitated through Engineering, but in some ways that is almost circumstantial. When given the opportunity the core learning outcomes reach into, truly, every content area. Every one of them. And into fields that go well beyond just the traditional definition of Engineering. The adage "if something appears too good to be true, then it likely is" simply doesn't apply to e4USA. It represents a truly extraordinary opportunity.
Jackelyn Lopez Roshwalb
Stacy Klein-Gardner
Stacy Klein-Gardner
Adjunct Professor
Richard, thank you for sharing your rich and deep experiences with our e4usa curriculum and professional development. I hope that your remarks coming from a music teacher turned engineer and engineering educator resonate deeply with other potential collaborators.
Dave Eisenberg
The e4usa program has allowed my students to grow as learners and develop skills needed to cultivate a growth mindset and work as part of a team.
Jackelyn Lopez Roshwalb
Stacy Klein-Gardner
Stacy Klein-Gardner
Adjunct Professor
Dave, your students have really taken this e4usa program and run with it! I look to your engineering school admissions to college and your vast success in different engineering-based competitions... wow.
Pamela Lottero-Perdue
This is a fabulous video about a most excellent project. Keep up the amazing work!
Stacy Klein-Gardner
Jackelyn Lopez Roshwalb
Nicki Sirianni
This program sounds amazing- I wish I had this when I was in High School! Your video mentions that teachers from all different disciplines can use your program, and I was wondering what kinds of supports or resources do you offer teachers? I have found that engineering can sometimes be an intimidating topic for educators, especially those who do not have a STEM background, and would love to hear how your program has thought about educator supports!
Jackelyn Lopez Roshwalb
Stacy Klein-Gardner
Jackelyn Lopez Roshwalb
Senior Lecturer
Yes, one of our goals is to help engineering be accessible to teachers of all backgrounds and experiences. We've created an intensive summer professional development experience for new and 2nd year e4usa teachers that involves doing engineering design, working in teams, and connecting engineering to their school communities. We facilitate a year long community of practice where teachers meet regularly, connect with, and support each other. The e4usa program sets up coaching groups led by experienced e4usa teachers. Ultimately, we aim to demystify engineering for both students and teachers so that everyone can see themselves as engineers.
Stacy Klein-Gardner
David Eisner
Sandra Osp Stefansdottir
This is such a great program! I wish I had something similar to participate in and experience during my high school years—an excellent engagement for our future engineers to get in touch and learn about Engineering.
Jackelyn Lopez Roshwalb
Stacy Klein-Gardner
David Eisner
It is a great program, and I'm proud to be part of it! I work on MyDesign, a web-based LMS where students can upload submissions and receive feedback, and where teachers can track student progress and score submissions based on the Engineering Design Process Portfolio Scoring Rubric (EDPPSR).
Whether you've used MyDesign or are hearing about it for the first time, what features would you like to see included? We love feedback and suggestions. Thanks!
Jackelyn Lopez Roshwalb
Stacy Klein-Gardner
Jackelyn Lopez Roshwalb
Senior Lecturer
David, thank you for your work in creating ways for students to share their engineering design projects and teachers to provide feedback. I find that using MyDesign really made my students' work much more thorough and thoughtful.
David Eisner
Mike Kiser
I have taught engineering by design for three years before e4usa and now three years with e4usa. I have STEM background and specifically an engineering background. This program has transformed my classroom in ways that I am going to mention and ways I am sure to forget. Everything about this program is student driven. The narrative changed from what can I as a teacher give to these students to benefit them and prepare them for future courses to what situations or challenges can I present to students and have the students solve changes everything. Students are engaged, students are working in teams collaboratively, students are learning about topics they have never studied in prior classes, problem solving skills are stretched, creativity is encouraged, and students are proud of their work. The students are learning the same skills I was taught in my introduction to engineering class in college such as engineering design, computer aided design or CAD, building techniques, collaboration with peers, criteria and constraints, stakeholders, and documentation of work. Most of all, students are learning while removing the barriers that are traditionally associated with engineering. This program is built around the concept of inclusion the idea that everyone can learn the basic principles of engineering and use them in their everyday life. I have seen it now for three years and the tenet is true. Once these barriers are removed students can see what they are truly capable of. These same barriers exist for educators as well. If all students can learn these principles it stands to reason that teachers from all kinds of backgrounds can teach it as well. A good friend of mine started this program with me as a music teacher several states removed from me. That same educator is one of our best e4usa teachers. Another friend of mine is a history teacher same story. You should see the projects their students turn out, the documentation of the work accomplished, and most of all the future engineers that leave their classrooms. If you see this video and read these posts and think to yourself my students could benefit from this type of class. The answer is yes and please get involved. Everyone can take this class and be successful and everyone can teach this class and be successful. Is it different than a traditional classroom modality--yes. Is it better than a traditional classroom modality--yes and it is not close. By far the best decision I have made for my students was being part of this program and gaining an e4usa family of supporters.
Katey Shirey
David Eisner
Jackelyn Lopez Roshwalb
Stacy Klein-Gardner
Jackelyn Lopez Roshwalb
Senior Lecturer
Mike, we are so appreciative to have you on the e4usa team. I am always blown away by the engineering design work that your students produce. You are such a great resource and support for other e4usa teachers, and we all appreciate your thoughtful contributions. I look forward to seeing the change your students will make on our world!
Stacy Klein-Gardner
Mike Bitner
David and Sandra, I share your pride in being a part of such a great program and creating the MyDesign web application, a tool that brings teachers and students together in the pursuit of project-based learning.
Jackelyn Lopez Roshwalb
David Eisner
Jacqueline Ekeoba
Wow! This is a very timely project for Texas schools, as we recently adding engineering principles to our state standards. Thank you for sharing this work!
Jackelyn Lopez Roshwalb
Stacy Klein-Gardner
Stacy Klein-Gardner
Adjunct Professor
We would be excited to expand more in Texas and would welcome any specific suggestions you might have there.
Carsten Binsner
The e4usa program, has given my students the opportunity to solve real live problems, which gives learning a real purpose. I am so glad to be able to support my students as their teacher and to see how they come up with these amazing created solutions!
Jackelyn Lopez Roshwalb
Jackelyn Lopez Roshwalb
Senior Lecturer
Carsten, I am so grateful for the work you do bringing excitement to your e4usa engineering classroom. It was very enjoyable to watch the video clips of your teams' Design-a-thon and their authentic engagement with their stakeholders (including the very cute dogs!).
Jeannie Chipps
I really enjoy seeing the professional learning that e4usa teachers are able to engage in. So many wonderful teachers with unique perspectives across the country coming together to support students in the problem-solving and design projects!
Jackelyn Lopez Roshwalb
Jackelyn Lopez Roshwalb
Senior Lecturer
Working with our teachers is one of my favorite parts of being on the e4usa team! They are the ones doing the real and meaningful work of showing that engineering is truly for everyone. I can't wait to welcome the new teachers to our team at our upcoming summer professional development programs.
Christine Delahanty
I really like crossing disciplines within great engineering. We actually accept our engineering design course as an arts/humanities general education course because it combines creativity in visual and graphical arts within engineering design. It's so important to emphasize the importance of engineering in everyday life, and incorporate collaboration and teamwork. How do you encourage faculty from a different discipline to participate? How do you reduce or eliminate the fear of failure?
Jackelyn Lopez Roshwalb
Jackelyn Lopez Roshwalb
Senior Lecturer
One of our approaches is to embrace failure as true to the practice of engineering! It is challenging for students and teachers alike to not hit it out of the park the first time, so we intentionally build in reflection, growth, and iteration as values in our classroom and in our community of practice.
Christine Delahanty
Thanks Jackelyn This is very helpful. I really like the values you intentionally build into your program to address failure.
Jennifer Kouo
Engineering for US all is truly for ALL teachers and for ALL students!
Jennifer Kouo
Engineering for US all is truly for ALL teachers and for ALL students!
Jackelyn Lopez Roshwalb
Marla Rudnick
My students are really excited about e4usa. I had one minority female student last year who was going to major in physics in college but then changed her major to mechanical engineering.
Marla Rudnick
My students are really excited about e4usa. I had one minority female student last year who was going to major in physics in college but then changed her major to mechanical engineering.
Jackelyn Lopez Roshwalb
Jackelyn Lopez Roshwalb
Senior Lecturer
Thank you Marla for your meaningful work as an e4usa teacher making such a lasting impact on our students!
Katey Shirey
Yes to the energy and excitement in this video! It's amazing to see the breadth of projects--helping others learn, helping local zoos, and using sustainable resources to live and learn. Kudos to these educators and students pushing themselves to become student engineers!
Jackelyn Lopez Roshwalb
Claire Duggan
Great video and program. I would be very interested in learning more about the pathways students that have participated in this effort have taken in higher education. How many are now pursuing engineering?
Jackelyn Lopez Roshwalb
Stacy Klein-Gardner
Stacy Klein-Gardner
Adjunct Professor
Excellent question, Claire, and one that our team is super interested in too. As you know, collecting this longer term data once they leave high school can be challenging. We've just kicked off a research study on this very topic. We know some great anecdotal stories and what our teachers are saying. We're excited to track them further.
Scott Dooley
e4usa has been transformative in my building this year; not only for my students and myself, but for the entire school. Rather than learning about engineering, my students are actually DOING engineering. The student centered projects and problem solving approach has allowed my students to dive right in and began creating and making items, testing them, iterating them, and finally getting them out in the hands of other students and classrooms where they are used on a daily basis.
Kids meet with stakeholders to get input into what is needed in those classrooms and then they design, build, test, and iterate those products before turning them loose into the wild for field testing. After time in the clients and stakeholders hands, we then gather data on the effectiveness of the product and go back to iterate further and improve them. We have created permanent passes for our entire building, math manipulatives for our elementary classrooms, cable management systems for our IT department, branded keychains and toys for incoming prospective students, and all of this was in our first year of joining the e4usa team.
Student enthusiasm and engagement has been off the charts, and my students, who had no prior experience or access to any kind of engineering content or family members who are engineers, have started to think of themselves as engineers themselves. We couldn't be happier with the results after our first year, and interest has expanded so much that we are offering a second level engineering course next year.
If your school doesn't offer engineering content for your students, e4usa is the best way to get the ball rolling in your building or district. The problem solving skills my students have learned this year have so many cross-curricular and real world applications and the value this has added to our content and curriculum school wide has been incredible.
Stacy Klein-Gardner
Jackelyn Lopez Roshwalb
Stacy Klein-Gardner
Adjunct Professor
Thank you for sharing your e4usa story, Scott. You're an amazing engineering teacher and engineer yourself.
Ricky Guy
This is an excellent approach to introducing engineering to teachers that do not have experience in engineering. I wish this program had existed when I was in high school. Great video!
Stacy Klein-Gardner
Jackelyn Lopez Roshwalb
Stacy Klein-Gardner
Adjunct Professor
Thanks for the positive feedback. I must confess that it's fun to create the class I wish I could have taken in high school, too!
Anna Suarez
President
Fantastic program! It appears that most or high percentage of teachers participating in the program are from other disciplines. Is this correct? If so, how are you able to recruit music, art, history, etc. into the program? How are teachers integrating engineering principles into what is likely a packed curriculum in their subject area? Do you then help school districts add an engineering course to their course offerings for those students wanting to delve into engineering at a deeper level?
Stacy Klein-Gardner
Jackelyn Lopez Roshwalb
Stacy Klein-Gardner
Adjunct Professor
Hi Anna. Great question. We have schools who are realizing that either their current engineering course isn't bringing a wide diversity of students and want to change that - and we have schools that want a curriculum that is more affordable - who switch to e4usa so those are current engineering teachers (but not necessarily trained that way). Then a very exciting part is where we have teachers who come from a wide variety of backgrounds, mostly science but also music and history (and soon to be an English teacher too). We've had some success with teachers integrating e4usa into a science class, but we are finding that that is challenging because there's just so much content to cover from both sides. We've had great success where these teachers who are new to engineering are teaching this Intro to Engineering class. Many of these teachers find overlap with other creative and design processes and feel comfortable moving in the direction of engineering. It's so exciting.
We're steadily growing the number of districts that we're working with as a whole - and even starting to work on state level approvals for e4usa. You're right in that the next thing these districts need is a program of study that goes beyond this e4usa course. I've observed that some of the districts who are using e4usa with 9th graders and sometimes 10th graders are finding success stretching e4usa into two years of content. Also in my observations, e4usa sets up students well for a capstone type experience.
Anna Suarez
President
Hi Stacy, thank you for your response. Your project team may want to think about a supplement request given the rich implementation information being captured and potential steps to helping schools and districts integrate engineering into the curriculum more widely. Again terrific project!
Christine Royce
Professor
It was great to see all of the engaged students! It was interesting to see how many different ideas that they came up with for their own projects. I appreciated that it discussed all of the different classes/courses that could use this type of approach. Since the students seemed to be in many different cities based on the graphics (i.e. Philadelphia, PA) - how was it rolled out to the different areas and how were teachers recruited?
Jackelyn Lopez Roshwalb
Stacy Klein-Gardner
Adjunct Professor
Thanks for the great question, Christine. The projects really are all over the map! It's fun to document that and give other teachers a wide range of examples for inspiration in their own classrooms. Our first big design project is typically school-based and teacher-selected (though many teachers allow students to have input on what it will be). Our second big design project is student-selected and often student-generated as they see engineering problems in the world.
We're actually still recruiting a few more schools for next year - so go to Apply to Join | Engineering For US All (e4usa.org) if you want in on our research study! We've had a wide variety of recruiting approaches from just having a website and seeing who applies to having our team, who is spread across multiple universities across the country, recruit in their areas. Now that we also have an active group of university and industry liaisons, they're also bringing schools to the table.
We're in year 4 of 6 of funding now. Once we've completed our research, we intend to share this curriculum for free so that all schools can access it. Our curriculum is hosted through our wonderful partner, TeachEngineering.org.
Christine Royce
P.J. MathWorks
Great video! It is so refreshing to see how you are approaching diversity, equity and inclusion by bringing applications of engineering to younger students in ways that will resonate with a broad audience. I think many of us would have loved to have had that course in high school. Thank you for all your efforts to make a difference in how students understand the impact that engineers can have on the world!
Stacy Klein-Gardner
Stacy Klein-Gardner
Adjunct Professor
Thanks for your support and encouragement over the many years, P.J.! I'm excited to be finding ways to partner on these efforts.
P.J. MathWorks
Great video! It is so refreshing to see how you are approaching diversity, equity and inclusion by bringing applications of engineering to younger students in ways that will resonate with a broad audience. I think many of us would have loved to have had that course in high school. Thank you for all your efforts to make a difference in how students understand the impact that engineers can have on the world!
Jackelyn Lopez Roshwalb
Jackelyn Lopez Roshwalb
Senior Lecturer
Thank you very much for your feedback P.J.! I'm excited to see humans at the center of this engineering curriculum and I hope that indeed, students will see engineering as a path to making the world a better place.
Brendan McCarthy
I think something that has been overlooked but needs to be emphasised about this program is its adaptability to students' ability levels. By focusing on the engineering design process rather than specific projects or activities e4usa provides an opportunity for students at all levels of engineering. Many students in my e4usa class had never held a screwdriver when they entered the room in the fall while colleagues have students capable of advanced robotics and electronics.
Stacy Klein-Gardner
Jackelyn Lopez Roshwalb
Stacy Klein-Gardner
Adjunct Professor
Brendan, I really appreciate the addition of this aspect of the e4usa curriculum to this conversation! You're right that the e4usa curriculum is very flexible, allowing it to succeed in many classrooms, no matter their age or skills. Solving local problems is meaningful to high school students, and readily allows for differentiation.
On a related note, I love watching students use a screwdriver or a drill for the first time!
Jennifer Kidd
Thrilled to see this. My preservice teachers taking an educational technology course help me run an after school technology club for 5th graders during which we build bio-inspired robots. In the past some of my secondary education students (English, history) and my PE students have complained that the project isn't relevant to them. I love that you are proving them wrong! It would be great to see how non-STEM teachers are embracing your program. Where can I find that?
Jackelyn Lopez Roshwalb
Stacy Klein-Gardner
Adjunct Professor
Thank you! I'm pasting below a couple of references about some of our non-STEM teachers embracing our program.
Reid, K., Dalal, M., & Beauchamp, C. (2020). A music teacher teaches engineering and uses CAD: A case study. In D. Schmidt-Crawford (Ed.), Proceedings of Society for Information Technology & Teacher Education International Conference (pp. 1311-1316). Online: Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education (AACE).
Dalal, M., Carberry, A.R., Warmington, D., & Maxwell, R. (2020). A case study exploring transfer of pedagogical philosophy from music to engineering. ASEE/IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference (FIE), Uppsala, (pp. 1-4). https://doi.org/10.1109/FIE44824.2020.9274128
Carberry, A.R., Dalal, M., Nagda, M., & McCarthy, B. (2021). Expanding the STEM teacher pool: A history teacher’s experience teaching a high school engineering course. National Association of Research in Science Teaching (NARST) Virtual Conference.
Jennifer Kidd
thank you so much! Very helpful!