Spring 2002
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Spring 2002 |
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Reaching Out Thanks to almost $6.3 million from the Lilly Endowment of Indianapolis, Rose-Hulman will be expanding its service to students and teachers in Indiana middle schools and high schools, to entrepreneurs, and to the college’s own students. The combination of these projects will allow Rose-Hulman to help create jobs, interest more middle- and high-school students in mathematics and science, expand access to ideas, give Rose-Hulman students more real-world project experience, and bring student-designed technical solutions to the marketplace. This series of articles on pages 14-16 provides an in-depth look at the grant details and the impact they will have on Rose-Hulman and its outreach. During the past eight months, the Endowment made the following gifts:
The telephones are ringing off the hook for Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology's Homework Hotline, giving tutors an opportunity to help middle- and high-school students to better comprehend the complexities of mathematics and science, and improve their problem-solving skills. Through January of the 2001-2002 school year, the toll-free service helped 5,563 callers -- well on the way to meeting the goal 10,000 calls. And, the prospects are even better in the future. A $2.6 million grant provided by the Lilly Endowment Inc. will help the Homework Hotline expand its reach across Indiana school regions, starting this fall. The expansion will be done in three phases through the following schedule:
The $2.6 million grant continues a partnership that has paved the way for the Homework Hotline to become an important educational resource for students, teachers and parents, according to Learning Center/Homework Hotline Director Susan Smith. The Endowment provided a $1 million grant in 1999 to expand the hotline into central Indiana school districts during the past two years. The service was started in 1990 after Rose-Hulman was approached by officials of the Greater Terre Haute Chamber of Commerce and Vigo County School Corporation; expanded into nearby Clay Community Schools (Clay County) in 1991; Blackford County (Hartford City) in 1992; and Monroe County and five west central school districts this school year. "With the Homework Hotline, Rose-Hulman has the spark of an idea and the will to develop it," said Sara B. Cobb, Lilly Endowment vice president for education. "Now, through strategic collaborations involving Rose-Hulman, teachers, schools and students, Indiana middle- and high-school students who have questions about their math or science homework can get immediate help. The college students on the other end of the line don't just give them the answers, they teach them how to arrive at the correct results." The Homework Hotline is available from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. on Sundays through Thursdays during the school year. The toll-free telephone number is 1-877-ASK-ROSE (1-877-275-7673). A total of 54 Rose-Hulman students serve as tutors, with 20 available to answer calls each night at the hotline's state-of-the-art communications center.
Technical innovations created by Rose-Hulman students will
soon be featured on a Web Mall to improve the chances those ideas will make it
to the marketplace. The Web Mall
project also intends to create more jobs for students at Indiana entrepreneurial
companies, encourage more students to become entrepreneurs, and increase
sponsored projects available to students. The Web Mall is being funded through a three-year, $1,992,000 grant from Lilly Endowment Inc. of Indianapolis. It will be online in March via the Rose-Hulman Web site (www.Rose-Hulman.edu). “Students generate hundreds of technical ideas that result from projects they’ve completed as part of their course work,” said Art Western, interim vice president for academic affairs at Rose-Hulman. “Often those projects help only a single person or business. Our goal is to expand the access to those ideas, which may help businesses launch new products or services of value to the public.” The Web Mall will display prototypes of student projects that would be of interest to venture capitalists, corporations, entrepreneurs, government agencies or non-profit groups. Successful prototypes in use that could reach larger audiences via the Web Mall include low-cost data acquisition systems, devices to help children and adults who are physically disabled, and software for microcontrollers. “Student project opportunities will increase after potential sponsors visit the Web Mall and better understand how students can effectively move ideas to the prototype stage,” Western explained. The increased interaction between students, innovators and businesses will encourage more students to view Indiana as a desirable location to develop new companies and products, Western said. The grant also provides funds to create 20 new student internships at Indiana entrepreneurial companies. “The Web Mall is another example of the exciting ideas we have seen coming from Rose-Hulman,” said Sara B. Cobb, Endowment vice president for education. “The Web Mall will provide a way for its talented students to get their ideas before a broad audience, and the process will teach them entrepreneurial skills so vital to their future success.” Web Mall activities will be integrated into engineering and entrepreneurial undergraduate courses at Rose-Hulman. Management of the Web Mall will be coordinated by six students, including a chief operating officer who will report to a six-member governing board of faculty and staff, according to Dan Moore, interim associate dean of the faculty, who will serve as chair of the governing board. "Students will operate the day-to-day activities of the Web Mall,” he said. “They’ll decide what projects to feature, manage budgets and be responsible for interacting with external audiences,” Moore stated.
Indiana middle-school teachers will soon find it easier and quicker to use rapidly increasing Internet resources to improve science, mathematics and technology education by accessing an interactive Web portal that will be created and hosted at Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology. The new virtual resource center will feature a digital librarian, databases of multimedia teaching resources, access to real-time data for use in science projects, Web-delivered simulations, and resources for course development. The creation of the Web portal is being funded by a $1,770,000, three-year grant from the Lilly Endowment of Indianapolis. The portal will be called SMART, which is an abbreviation for Science and Mathematics Access to Resources for Teachers. SMART will be launched this fall. SMART will be highly interactive and include a Community of Practice where teachers can rapidly share ideas, collaborate on projects, host workshops on the Web, receive assistance from Rose-Hulman faculty, and create customized Web services, according to Patricia Carlson, project director and Rose-Hulman professor of American literature. "Perhaps at no time in educational history has there been such a rich variety of educational resources available to teachers because of the Internet," Carlson said. "However, the demands placed on teachers make it increasingly difficult for them to have the time to use those resources to benefit their students. The ease of using the Web portal will create professional development opportunities for teachers on a daily basis and encourage them to use advanced technology in the classroom." Sara B. Cobb, Endowment vice president for education, said, "SMART will unleash the potential of the Internet to provide busy teachers with creative strategies to improve student learning, and they will be offered in efficient and user-friendly ways. This is especially significant in light of Indiana’s new academic standards for math and science." "Through its Homework Hotline and other programs, Rose-Hulman has built a substantial record of offering relevant and meaningful assistance to teachers and students, and we see SMART as yet another exciting development in this impressive portfolio." Middle-school students are the target population because the transitional years of grades six through eight prove critical for students who lose interest and lack success, according to Carlson. "Those students typically don’t take the proper high school courses needed to pursue a college degree in science, mathematics or technology." SMART will help teachers achieve the key strategies outlined by the Indiana Department of Education K-12 plan for technology, according to Carlson. "The digital librarian will compile collections of teaching materials for use to meet the state’s guidelines," she noted. "The online librarian will also partner with Rose-Hulman faculty to create learning modules, Web-delivered workshops and provide daily help to middle-school teachers." Carlson will rely on input from Indiana educators to ensure that SMART will deliver the "best educational practices available." A seven-member board of advisors will be created along with a team of 20 teachers who will be selected to serve as SMART leaders within their school districts. "Our goal is for SMART to not only increase the amount of new media-related activities in the classroom, but more important, we want to raise the quality of that educational activity," Carlson stated. "This will be accomplished by creating a powerful easy-to-use gateway to Web-delivered resources that enable teachers to develop exciting, new ways for students to learn."
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