Partnerships - The Witten Fund
The Witten Fund supports on campus workshops, seminars, guest speakers and faculty grant writing thanks to the generous donation of Cal Poly alumnus Wesley Witten. The Fund has supported guest speakers such as Uri Triesman of the University of Texas to visit campus and talk about the state of mathematics education, and what it would take to be the best in the world. During the 2008-9 school year, the Witten Fund will support a quarterly seminar series focused on effective teaching strategies to advance learning among university students. The series will kick-off this fall with a visit from David Finster of Wittenberg University who will discuss the Reflective Judgment Model and the student’s perspective of science teaching.
The Fund also supports faculty grant writing through the Witten Awards. Given on an annual basis, the $3000 awards are provided to faculty members as grant writing support for projects that align with CESaME’s vision and goals (hyperlink to vision and goals page). Awardees are selected from a cross campus applicant pool and have included a range of diversity over the past three years:
The 2008-9 Witten Award RFP will be available by October 15, 2008.
Witten Award RFP: Word
Previous recipients include:
2008 Recipients | Proposal |
| Seth Bush, Ed Himelblau, Chance Hoellwarth, John Keller, COSAM | Proposal to the Robert Noyce Scholarship Program that will focus on recruitment of highly qualified science and engineering undergraduates into careers in teaching science at the middle and high school levels. |
2007 Recipients | Proposal |
| Bryan Mealy Electrical Engineering | Project-based Sustainable Engineering for Enhancing Middle Schools. Project seeks to develop curricula/teaching materials to introduce the concept of Sustainable Engineering in middle schools. |
| Dennis Fantin Chemistry/Biochemistry | Laboratory Chemistry for Students with Vision Impairments. Project seeks to develop and test new methods that will allow blind and low-vision students to independently perform experiments, acquire data and make observations in high school chemistry courses. Phase one of will develop/test laboratory protocols and techniques, accessible instrumentation, and curriculum aids (molecular modeling set). |
| Fei Wang Electrical Engineering | Nano-materials and devices integrate research and education of all ages. Participating high school students will work closely with faculty, graduate and undergraduate students on fabrication and characterization of nano-devices for information storage purpose. |
| Jasna Jovanovic and Jennifer Jipson Psychology & Child Development | The Impact of Parent-Child Conversations about Science on Children’s Science Attitudes. The proposed project examines parent-child interactions during visits to an informal science learning center. We will investigate potential motivations underlying the ways parents talk about science with their children and how girls’ attitudes toward science are impacted by these interactions. |
| Ignatios Vakalis, et al Computer Science | Seeking NSF funds for a multi-year project to promote Computer Science and related disciplines (i.e., Computational Science and Modeling) to high schools students, particularly women and minorities. |
| Lynne Slivovsky Electrical Engineering | Bridging Informal and Formal K-12 Education Through Service Learning. Seeking an NSF Informal Education grant to conduct summer workshops to design and build traveling exhibits as a mechanism for teachers to integrate the educational content in a meaningful way in their classrooms. |
| Jeff Jacobs Natural Resource Management | Improving Student Environmental Literacy: A Program Improvement Process. This project will implement a Program Improvement Process, which will create stronger environmental education experiences for youth and will help K-12 educators to be successful in advancing environmental literacy. |
2006 Recipients | Proposal |
| Kathy Chen Materials Engineering | Engineering a new pipeline for STEM teachers. |
| Susan Duffy Liberal Studies | Environmental Literacy: Advocacy and Education through an Integrated Curriculum |
| Dennis Fantin Chemistry | Laboratory Chemistry for Students with Vision Impairments |
| Bob Field Physics | Global Evolution Education Program |
| Al Liddicoat Electrical Engineering | with David Cantu (MESA) and Michael Black (Biology): Cal Poly NSF GK-12 |
| Lou Rosenberg (College of Education and Materials Engineering) | Time Lapse Video as Constructivist Learning Tool for K-12 Science |