SPEED ED: SPEED Lab High-school Outreach
The SPEED ED Lab group is the educational outreach component of the SPEED Lab. Student members of SPEED ED are undergraduates planning to teach at the K-12 level after they graduate. They are being trained to help with the planned high-school outreach efforts of the SPEED Lab, with the following goals in mind:
- Seed Maine high schools with teachers familiar with modeling and simulation in mathematical biology
- Expose high-school students to these concepts, demonstrating some applications of mathematics and computers not typically seen at that level
- Provide training in mathematical and computer-simulation modeling to students interested in learning more, and the opportunity to participate in current research in mathematical biology (note: no prior experience with computer programming is necessary or assumed)
- Help recruit more students into fields such as mathematics, computer science, and biology, hopefully including possibly recruiting more students to enroll at the University of Maine and join the SPEED Lab
The SPEED ED group is in the planning stages for beginning outreach efforts to high schools in the Orono/Bangor area (initially) and possibly beyond (later on). In Spring 2008, we are giving talks in area high schools, demonstrating computer simulations of a few types of models, while gauging the level of interest from the community. Examples covered in the talk will include various types of models from population ecology, epidemiology, and perhaps particle models from physics.
If all goes well, beginning in Fall 2008 we will then provide an opportunity for area high school students to begin training, and become directly involved with some of the SPEED Lab research projects. This will likely happen in two ways:
- For students close enough to get to the UMaine campus in afternoons, current members of the SPEED Lab will be available to students who have questions or would like some assistance working through the training materials which will be provided
- For students further away, we can have weekly meetings on the UMaine campus to get together and work on the training materials
If you are a teacher or administrator at an area high school, please feel free to contact Dr. Hiebeler if you'd like to make arrangements to have him give a talk at your school.