The 17-year-old was one of a group of teens playing in the snow at Liberty Middle School off Wallace Tatum Road when he hit a fire hydrant while sledding.
In response to the need for a diverse, highly skilled STEM workforce that can work collaboratively and communicate effectively, colleges of engineering have developed diversity-focused recruitment, ...retention, and outreach efforts. Many programs have also begun to emphasize technical communication skills. A national organization that integrates these priorities is the Engineering Ambassadors Network (EAN), which trains undergraduates to raise awareness of what engineers do and how they contribute to society. Typical ambassador activities include the delivery of a presentation and a hands-on activity to middle or high school students. Currently, there are an estimated 634 EAs in the United States. For many, the ambassador role begins during a large, multi-institution workshop. Post-event surveys reveal high levels of ability, confidence, and preparedness to create and deliver outreach presentations. Post-workshop interviews reveal that the training offers a platform for role identity development. The ambassador role aligns career-related motivations, resonance with messages contained in the National Academy of Engineering’s Changing the Conversation report, beliefs about the mission of the EAN, and plans for how to fulfill the Network’s mission. After the initial training, students’ role identities reflect an integration of their undergraduate engineering student role with the new role of ambassador, with the intermediary role of an effective presenter serving as a bridge. The workshop targets the need to improve students’ communication proficiency, and focuses sparingly on the hands-on activity component of ambassadorship. Consequently, little is known about whether learning to create and facilitate a classroom activity impacts what ambassadorship means to students, and how these perceptions are integrated into existing ambassadorial or professional future role components of self-perceptions, goals, beliefs and action possibilities. The present study focused on two questions. 1. For students in an ambassador role during an outreach visit, what is the purpose of the hands-on activity? 2. How do ambassadors approach the development of a hands-on activity? The context for this case study with embedded units is a five-day intensive training at a small, engineering-focused university. Training involved 30 students, and a purposefully diverse sample of 8 students was obtained. All students had recently completed the national-level workshop. Post-training interviews were conducted with 4 junior and 4 senior ambassadors. The protocol elicited a narrative about the student’s experiences at both the national and local training events. Local training required students to develop both a presentation and a hands-on activity. Two researchers coded the interview transcripts. An additional researcher acted as an auditor. We present findings thematically to discern several outcomes: Hands-on activities are conceptualized as serving a clear instructional and motivational purpose for students. Ambassadors understood that the intention was to reinforce presentation concepts and inspire students to be interested in engineering. Ambassadors engaged in iterative design processes while creating activities, and sought the assistance of a supportive facilitator when necessary. Findings show that the hands-on activities are, for ambassadors, a key component of outreach visits and that the local training environment supports the development of these activities. Activities are generally aligned with ambassadors' interests and prior knowledge, as well as the presentations that they are also developing in the training context. Additional theoretical and practical implications are discussed.
...jurors who were into their second day of deliberations will now be at home Wednesday and Thursday waiting to see if weather will allow the courthouse to reopen on Friday, authorities said.
...jurors who completed their second day of deliberations will now be at home Wednesday and Thursday waiting to see if weather will allow the courthouse to reopen on Friday, authorities said.
A report of a double shooting was called in to police from the store at 422 Grayson Highway at 12:11 p.m., Lawrenceville police spokesman Capt. Greg Vaughn told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Police were on the scene within minutes of the shooting, and heavily armed officers cordoned off the entrance to the store while customers and employees inside scrambled to safety, witnesses said.
A report of a double shooting was called in to police from the store at 422 Grayson Highway at 12:11 p.m., Lawrenceville police spokesman Capt. Greg Vaughn told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
A SWAT team of officers from the Atlanta police fugitive unit, FBI and U.S. Marshals Service descended on the home in the 1200 block of Redford Drive to take Kirkland into custody, Joyner said.
APD Officer Jamael Logan saw an unmarked tow truck pulling a car at the intersection of Hatcher and Washington streets on Thursday in southeast Atlanta, according to police reports.
