Community Outreach
K-12 Outreach
NSM is a strong supporter of the Take Our Children to Work Day, and many departments have organized activities for visitors to their labs and offices.
Undergraduate and graduate student societies in the College have a proud tradition of visiting school classrooms with exciting exhibits and demonstrations. These groups include the Society for Physics Students, Chem Club, and Polymer Science and Engineering Students Club.
High School
NSM offers high school lab internships for which students can receive high school course credit. NSM also invites high school students for intensive lab tours and science career discussions.
The offers an NSF-funded 10-week summer research internship for high school students in which students receive a stipend to experience a faculty-supervised research laboratory in the Department of Polymer Science and Engineering, participate in special seminars, and produce oral and written presentations.
Teachers
Materials Research Science and Engineering Center (MRSEC) offers hands-on research experiences for high school teachers to help them create teaching modules for the middle school classroom.
The goal of NSM's Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics Education Institute is to enhance and foster the University's teaching, research, and academic outreach in Science, Mathematics, Engineering and Technology Education.
The Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics Teacher Education Collaborative (STEMTEC) has received major NSM funding to work with area colleges and school districts on this large scale K-12 outreach project, which originally engaged eight colleges and seven school districts in the Pioneer Valley and now include colleges around the state. Initiatives include the summer/fall program, which provides opportunities to obtain certification to teach after one summer and one semester of intensive coursework and student teaching while learning the most effective ways to teach science and math and working in innovative classrooms.
The UMass K-12 Network, administered by Morton Sternheim from the Physics Department, provides teachers and students with a user-friendly interface to the Internet, and instruction and encouragement for its use, and has served over 9,000 students and teachers statewide.
Centers
The Materials Research Science and Engineering Center (MRSEC) is committed to interdisciplinary education in polymer science and engineering both at UMass Amherst and with partners Smith College, Mount Holyoke College, Howard University, and Harvey Mudd College.
The Center for Hierarchical Manufacturing (CHM) partners with the University of Puerto Rico-Río Piedras, Mount Holyoke College, Springfield Technical Community College, Toyohashi University of Technology (Japan), Interuniversity Microelectronics Center. CHM's educational program includes summer workshops for K-12 science teachers, a summer undergraduate research program, interdisciplinary Ph.D. training opportunities, and community college instructional modules in nanomanufacturing.
Industrial Liaisons
Public Outreach
Dr. Judy Young's Sunwheel is an NSF-funded full-scale recreation of a prehistoric structure used to chart seasonal changes. Young, a professor in the Astronomy Department, uses this large ring, with 8 foot tall standing stones arranged around a circle 60 feet in radius, to help people understand principles of astronomy, and opens the Sunwheel to the public on a regular basis.
Connecticut River Project. Professor Ed Klekowski's research on the underwater archaeology of the Connecticut River has been featured on national public television. "Beneath the River," a video featuring Klekowski's work, embarks on a journey through time to explore the origins of the Connecticut River and the Connecticut River Valley. The video delves below the river's surface to reveal its natural and human history: unusual plant and animal life, catastrophic bridge wrecks, ancient waterfalls, and a mysterious abyss.
Lizzie Borden/Fall River Case Study. This web-based project led by David Hart, computer science, supports an inquiry-based approach to history through the lens of this infamous historical episode. The project enables K-12 students to study primary sources from the time of the murders and trial to understand the family, social, labor, political and economic history of the Gilded Age.
