Teacher Professional Development

Since CBEN’s inception, our centerpiece K-12 educational outreach program has been providing high-quality, long-term teacher training. We do this  by offering: CHEM 570 Nanotechnology for Teachers and Summer Internships in CBEN research laboratories.

Spring Content Course CHEM 570: Nanotechnology for Teachers

"I love the second part of the class each week!  I have learned so much MORE chemistry than I could have ever imaged.  I now understand more of the WHY and not just the BECAUSE.  I thought I was a GREAT chemistry teacher until you guys got a hold of me.  I have shared many of the topics of discussion with my AP chemistry kids and the BUCKY ball has been a wonderful discussion tool in my chemistry classes for Carbon 60, Rice, Nanotechnology, and organic chemistry." D. H., Seven Lakes High School "I really like the structure of the course and the way we're being exposed to a variety of research areas. The grad students have all been wonderful about explaining everything and their PowerPoint are certainly appropriate for my students as well." D.G., Chemistry Teacher & Science Department Chair, Dawson High School

This course helps teachers enrich their classrooms with cutting edge developments in the exciting field of nanotechnology, learn new pedagogical approaches to teaching science, provides teachers with the opportunity to refresh their understanding of core science concepts and to connect with their peers. This semester long course meets weekly and the 3 hour class is broken into 3 segments:

• Part 1 Teachers are immersed in nanotechnology research via laboratory tours, demonstrations, hands on experiments, or lectures from graduate students and CBEN faculty.
• Part 2 Teachers discuss how to most effectively bring this research into the classroom, develop lesson plans and reflect on how they have used the course in their teaching.
• Part 3 Drs. Hutchinson and Nichol link the nanotechnology research to physics and chemistry fundamentals and provide them with alternative teaching techniques to improve student learning by provoking thought about experimental observations and scientific discovery.

All of the CHEM 570 2009 lectures are archived and can be downloaded into podcasts. The weekly nanotechnology research presentations are archived as Session 1 and the Concept Development lectures are Session 2. Click here to access the archives

Click here for more information
Click here for the 2011 Application 

 Summer Internship in Nanotechnology

Intern discussing lab protocols with Dr. McHale.

The goals of our summer internship program are to expose teachers to the research environment, to reinforce each teacher’s sense of science as a process, to deepen each teacher’s understanding of the achievements and potential of nanoscience, and to apply lessons learned from the content class to a research setting.

Click here for more information and to download the 2011 application

Click here to view teacher Videos and Lessons