Engineering and Science Practices of Stormwater Problems for High School STEM Education (RTP)

This paper describes a program to encourage high school students, especially female and under-represented minorities (URM), to participate in hands-on Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) education. The program provides a learning model for science and engineering practices of the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS). It empowers students, and their teachers and communities, to create innovative solutions to a pervasive environmental problem: stormwater. This has been achieved by actively engaging participants with STEM professionals in an inquiry and project based instructional environment. Using the latest sensor technology for data collection and computer modeling for data analysis, students address the widespread problem of stormwater management. During a 3-day Stormwater Institute at the University of Maine, the participants gain the knowledge of working with wireless sensors and laboratory systems to collect water measurements, including temperature, conductivity, pH, phosphorous, dissolved oxygen, and bacteria. The students then can map water quality around several Maine communities and investigate innovative solutions to local stormwater issues. Each year, about 60 students and 10 teachers from several high schools with diverse backgrounds, including females—who are under-represented in most STEM fields, socio-economically disadvantaged, African Americans, Hispanics, and Native Americans are participating in this NSF funded project that began in 2014. Stormwater runoff is a pressing and expensive problem. The model presented in this paper STEM solution-focused with diverse citizen involvement will have nation-wide applicability and appeal. Keywords— Stormwater management, under-represented minorities, wireless sensors, STEM, Next Generation Science Standards