The focus for National Center for Engineering and Technology Education (NCETE) is research investigating how students learn technological concepts and skills, how students learn creative thinking and problem solving, how best to prepare technology and engineering education teachers, how information technology can be applied to improve technology and engineering education, and how the interdisciplinary, integrative nature of technology can be exploited positively to improve learning across the curriculum. As a collaborative partner, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign will prepare new Ph.D. candidates to integrate engineering content and practices into teacher education programs that prepare high school technology teachers.

This study examines the role of international service projects in the engineering curriculum to understand how students learn to be engineers. The study aids in identifying intercultural competence, civic-mindedness, professional identity, and technical areas such as design skills and problem solving. The study contributes to the development and dissemination of models and pedagogical approaches for incorporating key features of co-curricular international project work into the mainstream of instruction and curriculum reform. The broader impacts of this work include using international service in curriculum reform, considering alternatives to prepare for professional practice, and increasing enrollment of women engineering students.

This award provides support to assist the current funded programs to achieve the Illinois Standards. The goal of this project is to provide data for policy decisions to guide the work of Induction & Mentoring statewide. Some of the activities include: hosting regional meetings for new and continuing programs as needed, hosting webinars that focus on the Illinois Standards for Quality and Effectiveness of Beginning Teacher Induction and Mentoring Program, linking the programs with resources, professional development and networking workshops.