Pre-College Education
A fundamental component of CURENT’s pre-college program is to inspire young students and teachers through education outreach. Our goal is to inform K-12 students about present and anticipated energy-related issues, encourage problem-solving through creativity and an active imagination, and to familiarize them with possible engineering career paths.
Objectives
- Promote diversity from an early age with the goal of increasing enrollment of underrepresented populations in university programs
- Promote energy and engineering literacy in elementary schools and inspire students to explore engineering and science education
- Develop long-term partnership with schools
- Provide teachers and young scholars research opportunity to advance their engineering knowledge
- Introduce electrical, renewable energy, and power system concepts into classrooms
Programs
Research Experiences for Teachers
The Research Experience for Teachers (RET) program offers K-12 educators with a focus in STEM fields the opportunity to do research with our faculty and graduate students for either an academic year or summer term.
Young Scholars Program
The Young Scholars Program at CURENT gives high school students interested in electrical engineering a chance to perform research with our faculty and graduate students in our campus laboratories. This program is at UTK only.
Family Engineering Night
CURENT organizes Family Engineering Nights multiple times each year, inviting parents from the partner pre-college schools to experience the Center's research and education activities. The program is at UTK only.
CURENT has created an ebook based on RET lessons and geared towards grades K-5.
CURENT hosts multiple K-12 summer programs aimed to spark interest in science, math and engineering among young students.
Classroom Visits/Lab Tours
CURENT will bring our activities to you - or, you can visit and tour one of our state-of-the-art engineering labs! Please contact education@curent.utk.edu (Knoxville/Boston/Tuskegee area) or RPI Engineering Ambassadors (Troy, NY area) for more information.
Curriculum materials
Here you will find the CURENT Education website which includes materials from our pre-college program and materials develped by our visiting teachers and undergraduates. We hope that this site will be a useful resource that will increase your general engineering knowledge and knowledge of the power grid.
