Objectives. Distracted driving is a major public health issue in the United States. In response to requests from high school students participating in a university-based initiative, the authors describe the collaborative development and implementation of a curriculum designed to address distracted driving behaviors among students in four high-needs school districts in the northeastern United States. Method. The curriculum integrates current statistics on distracted and drowsy driving and three interactive learning stations: driving while distracted, walking while distracted, and driving while drowsy. Pre- and postsurveys were conducted to collect student driving data, assess student satisfaction with the program, and assess their likelihood of speaking up as a passenger in a high-risk situation. Results. The majority of students reported that they learned new information and would recommend the program to others. A Wilcoxon signed-rank test showed that students were more likely to speak up as a passenger with a distracted or drowsy driver (p < .001) after the program. Conclusion. This experience demonstrates a voluntary, multidisciplinary, university-based collaboration in the development of a novel public health education initiative. Based on the success of this phase, school districts elected to participate in Train the Trainer sessions to continue the program within their local high-needs school district.
Brook. She was Co-PI for several years with Paul Siegel, on TechPREP and STEM Tech. Tech-PREP is a program that provides 90 hours of education in the areas of computer science, mathematics, and physics, and engineering to middle school girls from under-served school districts. It also provides college mentors for each student. STEM Tech is a collaborative program that engages community and industry partners and WISE student mentors in developing STEM Tech Clubs. The clubs will service girls from underserved school districts. Each club will use service-learning to exam and come up with a design for an environmental issue. The designs will be built using the engineering design model and presented at a capstone event. She served on the Connect To Tech Advisory Board as a member on this network of school personnel, industry leaders, and community members, whose goal is to further the education of students on Long Island in STEM areas. She has been a Long Island Regional Service Learning Network, Advisory Board member. Members provide curriculum and technical assistance to school districts that are interested in developing a service learning pedagogy. Her focus has been on science and engineering programs. She has been a member of the Brookhaven National Laboratory's Women in Science group for the past four years. She partnered on the Forward to Professorship grant. This will provide workshops to WISE students and post graduates on how to negotiate the post graduate years. The program will also provide mentoring for young women. She developed and implemented the Macro Social Work class for the master's degree program at
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