The purpose of GreenSTEM is to establish a collaborative model to aid the development and establishment of an innovative training program for students at Drexel University and The University of Texas at El Paso. This project is focused on technologies for green materials, green manufacturing, renewable energy, and the groundbreaking approach that integrates experiential and research-based learning for undergraduate and graduate students through the use of virtual labs based on actual hardware and current research facilities.
A link to the University of Texas’s site can be found here.
The goals of the projects include:
- Developing cyber enabled courses and laboratories with Drexel University for enhancing green STEM learning
- Encouraging students to engage in green STEM disciplines
- Developing world-class online green STEM workforce best practices;
- Attracting and retaining STEM talent through a joint education environment
- Delivering coordinated and cohesive green STEM education programs through the Minority Innovation Engineering Research for Student Success (MINERSS) Laboratory.
In order to meet these goals, the proposed work will develop a student-centric green STEM program tailored for augmenting student interest in STEM, establishmentor-mentee relationships among the students at the various institutions, launch a 3-D online learning community equipped with internet of things technologies, build an online learning community and repository for students, provide stipends and incentives to students to encourage continuity in degrees in STEM, create a university-high school student partnership, and building workshops and educational sessions every semester to inform the potential student community and parents to establish the importance of encouraging students to pursue careers in STEM.