SEEK Programs 2013

A Successful Implementation

Summer Educational Experience at Kent (SEEK) In the summer of 2012, Kent School implemented the Summer Educational Experience at Kent (SEEK) under the supervision of Dr. Ben Nadire, who is the director of the Wentz Pre-Engineering program.

During its pilot year, SEEK offered two programs designed to give high school students, including those who will be beginning ninth grade, the chance to experience engineering education and entrepreneurship. The program was held in partnership with professionals from the University of Pennsylvania Wharton School of Business. This year, SEEK3: Grand Challenges for Global Development was held in conjunction with Harvard’s Kennedy School.

SEEK provides an applied learning environment.

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The participants shape their individual learning by participating in design, discovery, research, collaborative work, creative problem-solving, decision making and active experimentation. The students end the week by presenting their work.

Each SEEK program features keynote speakers and field trips, and it engages Kent alumni and other professionals, thereby appealing to all learning styles. In the summer of 2014, SEEK will expand into another area: Public Health Education.

SEEK1 (Pre-Engineering) The Wentz Pre-Engineering program, now in its sixth year, added SEEK1 to its framework to continue its ongoing effort to strengthen STEM education at Kent. This is done by raising awareness and interest in engineering and by identifying students with the potential to succeed in engineering-related studies.

The Wentz Pre-Engineering program is developed around a Pre-E Certificate. This certificate is given to those students who fulfill four requirements: A) Pre-E course work; B) extracurricular activities, such as the FIRST or VEX robotics competition; C) summer programs; D) attending guest lectures and field trips.

Kent School also awards a Judith B. and Howard B. Wentz Jr. College Scholarship Prize in Pre-Engi-

neering, which recognizes the superlative academic achievement of motivated students who show a command of STEM fields, have shown a strong commitment to pursuing Pre-Engineering studies while at Kent, and intend to major in engineering while in college. The recipient is selected by the faculty on the basis of curricular and extracurricular accomplishments related to the completion of Kent’s Pre-Engineering Certificate.

The cornerstone of SEEK1 is student involvement in hands-on learning. SEEK1 introduces prototyping (3D color printing), manufacturing and renewable energy, and ends its program with a VEX Robotics competition on an official VEX Robotics Competition field.

“Needless to say, Elizabeth’s experience at SEEK was truly life-changing… I do know that she has been more engaged in the activities at SEEK than she has been in the past two years. It’s refreshing to see her so passionate about what she’s learning. For that, I thank you profusely.

If Elizabeth becomes an engineer, it is because of the amazing introduction she had to engineering through the SEEK program.” —From Tamara Stepton, parent of SEEK1 participant “Thank you for the wonderful week! I really enjoyed every part of it.” —Adam Davenport ’15 “Thank you for running such a great SEEK program.

I really enjoyed the renewable energy part, and I also

SEEK participants gathered in front of the Science Building.

All SEEK photos

by Liam Nadire ’15

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SEEK3 (Grand Challenges for Global Development) Top left: Russ Marvin’s (P’17) keynote speech for both SEEK1 and SEEK2 on engineering and entrepreneurship.

Top right: End of the SEEK1 team presentation for renewable energy and robotics.

Bottom left: SEEK3 at the Connecticut Antique Machinery Association in Kent.

Bottom right: Mr. Seye, Dr. Sujata Bhatia, Dr. Nadire, Professor Calestous Juma and Father Schell.

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liked learning about the VEX robots and how they worked. I thought that SEEK was a great extension of school, and that it made for a great transition phase into summer. Thanks again.” —Adam Jolly ’15

SEEK2 (Entrepreneurship) Wharton Professor Keith Weigelt, the coordinator of the Field Application Project (FAP), and FAP Associate Director Stacy Franks run the SEEK2 program, where students delve into the creative world of entrepreneurship and explore innovative thinking while working in small groups. Topics covered include business plan ideas, competitive environments, sales and marketing, pricing strategies, operations & human resource management, and budgeting and accounting. This year, SEEK2 added another component to its five-day intensive program, a BOX simulation of “how to start a business,” run by Team Business Inc.

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In this session, which was ably coordinated by Kent School Dean Pape Seye, students learned how to leverage the power of engineering to solve global economic challenges. This session included themes selected from, but not limited to, Engineering in Economic History, Health and Nutrition, Energy and Water, and Education Technology. The program was under the leadership of Professor Calestous Juma, Director of the Science, Technology and Globalization Project at Harvard Kennedy School, and he was assisted by Dr. Sujata Bhatia, the Assistant Director for Undergraduate Studies in Biomedical Engineering and the Assistant Dean at Harvard Summer School. Also contributing to SEEK3 were four students from Harvard University and MIT, Sugarlabs, One Laptop per Child Foundation, members of the Kent faculty, and Dr. David Mueller, Kent School Class of 1963.

Dr. Ben Nadire, Director of Pre-Engineering

Preparing the Youth to Solve Global Grand Challenges

Vex robotics final team competition (SEEK1) sac attack game

Calestous Juma In a bold move, the U.K. government has

announced the creation of a £1 million prize for a new “grand innovation challenge.” According to Prime Minister David Cameron, the award would go to the “next penicillin” or a plane that could fly carbon-neutral across the Atlantic. This effort will complement the £1 million Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering. The inaugural prize was awarded to the inventors of the Internet and World Wide Web in London on June 25, 2013. The prize will not only recognize those who come up with outstanding ideas, but it will also serve as a source of inspiration for young people. Getting the youth to focus their creative energies on solving the world’s pressing challenges needs to start early, especially in high schools.

Indeed, high schools have started to explore how to prepare their students for the task. For example, Kent

School has launched the Summer Educational Experience at Kent (SEEK) to prepare students to tackle the problems outlined by the Grand Challenges for Engineering report prepared by the U.S. National Academy of Engineering.

The one-week program on Grand Challenges for Development was organized in conjunction with the Science, Technology, and Globalization Project at Harvard Kennedy School and involved students from Kent School, Middlesex School (Massachusetts) and Little Red School House & Elisabeth Irwin High School (New York).

The program involved faculty, speakers and student mentors from Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS), MIT, Boston University and Sugar Labs Foundation. In addition to Kent faculty, students also benefited from the School’s alumni who SUMMER 2013

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Above left: SEEK students visited the Emergency Room at Sharon Hospital.

Right: SEEK students at the fuel cell plant operated by AMERESCO

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shared their lifelong experiences in solving engineering challenges.

In her keynote, Dr. Sujata Bhatia from SEAS stressed the role of engineers in solving societal challenges in fields such as sustainability (solar power, fusion energy, carbon sequestration and nitrogen cycle); human well-being (clean water, infrastructure, health, medicines and the human mind); security (nuclear terror and cyber-security); and learning and discovery (virtual reality, personalized learning and tools for scientific discovery).

Based on the list derived from the NAE report, students decided among themselves which challenges to address. They broke into four working groups and decided to address four challenges: clean energy for rural areas; water desalination; personalized learning; and reverse innovation.

The energy working group used rural China as a reference point and proposed the use of biomass and wind energy as a way to power rural development.

The group was motivated by the view that readily accessible renewable energy is essential for promoting economic development in rural China and in other poor regions around the world.

Motivated by similar societal concerns, the second working group focused on ways of providing clean water to coastal populations around the world through desalination. The group sought to address the energy needs for desalination by tapping into tidal power and other renewable energy sources.

In response to the lack of access to technical education in poor regions around the world, the third group

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worked on ideas that leverage emerging low-cost technologies for personalized education. The group explores the potential of deploying technologies such as Raspberry Pi, BRCK and others. The Raspberry Pi is a $35 desktop computer, with similar computing capability to a smartphone. It can fit in one’s hand and requires almost no maintenance. The BRCK is a device that allows for Internet connectivity in regions where cellular connectivity is weak or cannot be accessed by normal devices.

In a notable departure from the standard grand challenges list, the fourth group chose to develop the idea of “reverse innovation,� a term that has been used by the CEO of GE, Jeffrey Immelt, and popularized in a namesake book by Vijay Govindarajan and Chris Trimble. The focus of the group was to find a way to spread prosperity in emerging economies by globalizing innovation.

The program was conducted through lectures, field visits, discussions and hands-on activities. Many of the students had already taken one-week programs on pre-engineering and entrepreneurship at Kent that provided design and commercialization principles as part of the Summer Educational Experience at Kent.

The lectures covered themes such as engineering in economic history, engineering for better health, engineering for clean energy and engineering education.

Students visited the agricultural and mining museum of the Connecticut Antique Machinery Association, the Emergency Room of Sharon Hospital, and a fuel cell plant operated by AMERESCO in Middletown, Connecticut.

The focus of the visits was to understand the role of engineering in solving societal challenges. At the agricultural museum, students were able to explore the role of engineering in agricultural transformation and its links with industrial revolutions around the world. At the hospital, students received firsthand information on how advances in medical engineering have helped to improve human health. The fuel cell plant was an opportunity for students to explore the linkages between scientific principles and engineering design.

The students benefited from mentoring by undergraduate and graduate students from Harvard, MIT, and Boston University’s Department of Biomedical Engineering. Mentors spent long hours helping the students to refine their ideas and sharing experiences as well as providing guidance on college life.

In addition to the mentors, the students also benefited from hearing from Kent alumni. Dr. David Mueller ’63 shared his life experiences from Kent to his graduate days at MIT and as a senior manager at Chevron. Dr. Mueller’s experience spans several decades of work in countries such as Brazil, China, France, India, Japan, Mexico, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Singapore and Thailand.

He stressed the importance of continuous improvement. “Things do not have to be bad to make them better,” he advised the students. He urged the students to find good role models and mentors. “School ends but learning continues,” he said.

In keeping with Dr. Mueller’s advice on the value of communication skills, the students presented their

initial ideas for feedback. They were asked to improve on them based on new information each day.

The students also received introductory lessons in programming from Walter Bender of Sugar Labs. Mr. Bender emphasized the difference between “education” and “learning.” He noted that the best learning opportunities are associated with solving practical problems. He challenged conventional views of “carrots and sticks” as a way to motivate the youth to address global challenges. Instead, he said there is emerging evidence to support the view that the best incentives are autonomy, mastery and purpose.

By the end of the week the groups had outlined their own challenges, offered solutions, and identified their economic, social, political, cultural and ethical aspects. They also benefited from feedback from other students as well as Kent teachers, mentors and the visiting faculty and speakers.

Bringing the task of global grand challenges to high schools is an important way to engage the youth and enrich their educational experiences. This can help the global community avoid George Bernard Shaw’s lingering worry that “Youth is wasted on the young.”

Calestous Juma is Professor of the Practice of International Development and Faculty Chair of Innovation for Economic Development Program at Harvard Kennedy School. He is a member of the judging panel of the Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering.

Students worked with mentors from Harvard and MIT with computers that are part of the One Laptop per Child program.

Twitter @calestous

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