The primary activity the teachers will engage in is pursuing an inquiry-based experience in bioengineering.  Therefore, most of the time will be spent on reading literature, designing an experiment, executing the experiment, analyzing the data, and is followed often by a repeat of this cycle until the desired objective is met.  Although the initial research objective will be provided by a WPI professor, teachers will have freedom in how they choose to meet this objective, and will have resources to conduct the experiments they design.  Teachers will be closely mentored by WPI engineering faculty and will have graduate research assistants that they can collaborate with.  Teachers will also spend time working on developing ideas for incorporating inquiry-based engineering into their classrooms.  During meetings with the group, teachers will present their lesson plans and get feedback and provide feedback to other group members. 

Time Commitment:

During 6-week summer program, teachers will work full-time at WPI, either in one of the research labs performing experimental design, execution, and analysis, or will work on developing curricular material for use in their classes in the upcoming academic year.  There will also be science seminars scheduled, along with weekly discussion groups for the teachers to share ideas with one another.  The overall commitment is approximately 40 hours/week, with 80% of time spent on research projects and 20% of time spent on curricular development.  During the following academic year, teachers will be asked to make at least 1 blog entry per month describing how they are progressing with implementing  engineering design ideas into their classes.  Teachers will also be asked to participate in two Saturday workshops during the academic year (6-8 hours total commitment).