The
First NSF Workshop for High School Teachers of Mathematics and Science
June
27, 2000
This workshop was hosted by the 2000 American Control Conference (ACC) with the assistance of the ACC organizers, Galip Ulsoy and Randy Freeman, and the encouragement and funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF). The workshop occurred on June 27, the day before the ACC commenced. More than 50 invited teachers of mathematics and science from selected high schools throughout the United States and many control researchers participated in this full day workshop. This was the first big and spectacular step in the efforts of the control community to increase high school teachers' awareness of the importance of control and systems ideas in technological development.
The purposes of this workshop were to enhance the cooperation among the various control groups and high school teachers of mathematics and science throughout the United States and the world, to give attention to control and systems ideas in technology, and to increase the general awareness of the importance of control and systems technology and its cross-disciplinary nature among high school teachers and students.
The participants were welcomed by Kishan Baheti from NSF, Tamer Basar from the IEEE Control Systems Society (CSS), Naim Kheir and Masayoshi Tomizuka from AACC, and Galip Ulsoy, the general chair of the 2000 ACC. There were 12 speakers who described in an outstanding way the usefulness and importance of control. While the majority of the speakers were from the control community, there were also speakers with backgrounds in medicine, motion pictures, and teaching.
Thanks to the outstanding speakers, the participating teachers quickly developed an appreciation and an enthusiasm for control which they have taken to their respective schools and will incorporate control ideas in their curricula, especially for math and science projects. Plans are being made to produce a video and a CD-ROM from the workshop lectures.
I would like to thank the CSS and AACC for their strong encouragement and technical assistance and Abe Haddad for his special assistance with holding the workshop at the ACC.
Bozenna
Pasik-Duncan
General Chair of the Workshop
Last
updated October 7, 2000
SReed