Marie is an alternate route teacher with an educational background in math, physics, chemical engineering and computer science. As the first girl in her family to go to college, and maybe to prove the point, she earned two bachelor's degrees, one from Montclair State University by day, and 8 years later, one from New Jersey Institute of Technology, by night, while working full time by day at Exxon Research and Engineering. While a traditional female career, like teaching, was the last thing on her mind, she was drawn to educational outreach because she herself had received so little career advice. She eventually ran the educational outreach program at Exxon. After 25 years, 20 at Exxon and 5 in the high tech industry, an unexpected layoff came at a bad time, she was also newly widowed. Job offers that were once plentiful were nowhere to be found. The first, and only, offer to finally appear was to teach physical science at Bayonne High School, for a significant pay cut. A new adventure began. In the ten years since then, she got to start up a research program, an engineering program, a science club, two FIRST Tech Challenge robotics teams, and brought in several new programs such as Technology Students Association, Young Science Achievers, and ACS Project SEED. She's been invited back do pharmaceutical engineering research with Research Experience for Teachers at NJIT every summer for the last 8 years now, with her Project SEED students. In 2008 one of her research students became a Science Talent Search Finalist. He also won best in category awards at the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair two years in a row. In 2010 she was named a Society for Science and the Public Teacher Fellow, and served on the Advisory Council for Intel ISEF since 2012. Marie currently teaches three levels of engineering courses, that she designed, and coaches students doing science research projects for competitions.
Crafting a Successful High School Engineering Program
AbstractThe Next Generation Science Standards incorporate engineering in many topics because the engineering design method parallels scientific method. Like science, engineering also requires critical thinking and curiosity, with a variety of subjects, or disciplines as they are known, which often overlap. While engineering depends on the principles established by science, it has however, its own identity and thought process, which might explain why pre-college engineering programs are still relatively new. To teach engineering from its point of view requires new content and a new teaching method. The product of the engineering design is technology, so hands on and practical applications are required, along with methods of documentation. Teachers also need a new relationship with students. To teach creative problem solving and productive troubleshooting students must learn not to fear failure, instead they must learn to value what it can reveal and exploit it. To make this happen the teacher must relinquish some control in order to enable to students to ow...
