RET Site: WySTACK - Supporting Teachers And Computing Knowledge

As the sole four-year institution in the state of Wyoming, the University of Wyoming (UW) will partner with twelve school districts, Northwest Community College faculty, and several industry partners to create a completely virtual RET site. This virtual approach mirrors the realities of present-day collaborative research and enables the researchers and educators an opportunity to identify limitations, needs, and requirements for rural-based engagement in authentic computer science research.

Pandemic-induced infrastructure modifications coupled with UW’s success in hosting virtual teacher professional development activities validate the feasibility of UW offering a virtual research experience. The site will recruit 36 high school STEM teachers and two community college faculty members to virtually participate in research with four CS faculty working on a diverse set of projects which all maintain a common thread of data science–either within Machine Learning, Cybersecurity, Virtual/Augmented Reality, or High Performance Computing.

The project builds upon existing work by the state to develop a community of practice among industry, academic, and community partners and has already provided authentic-inquiry experiences to hundreds of educators allowing them to develop useable curricular products in their classrooms.

The University of Wyoming in collaboration with twelve Wyoming school districts, Northwest (Community) College, and business/industry partners will host a new RET Site to engage 36 high school teachers and two community college faculty over a 3-year period. STEM teacher participants will engage in a six-week authentic summer virtual research experience focused on addressing rural issues through authentic applications and societal impacts of advanced computing research with academic year follow-up sessions.

Through a common thread of data science, specific project research areas include 1) AI and high-performance computing, 2) Machine learning for security,3) Virtual and augmented reality, and 4) Attacking and creating secure and resilient rural infrastructure. The educators will then translate their research experiences and newly gained content knowledge into their classrooms through the creation and dissemination of course materials and reusable curricular modules developed in collaboration with the research team and community college participants.

These engagements will contribute to the development and support of a larger community of practice, WyCS, that is coalescing in Wyoming between a variety of industry, academic, and community partners (uwyo.edu/wycs).

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.