Las Vegas 2002 ReportThe First NSF Workshop for High School Students on "Ideas and Technology of Control Systems" organized by the Technical Committee on Control Education was a big success. Approximately 130 Las Vegas high school students along with their teachers from the Academy for Mathematics, Science and Applied Technology at Clark High School took part in "Students + Workshops = Success + Fun" on Wednesday, December 11, 2002 in the Venetian Hotel. The workshop was being held in conjunction with the 2002 CDC in Las Vegas. It was organized by the Control Education Committee and sponsored by the NSF, the CSS Technical Committee and the University of Kansas. The chair of the workshop was Bozenna Pasik-Duncan from the University of Kansas and co-chairs were members of the Control Education Committee: Jing Sun, Molly Shor, Floyd Hanson, John Westman and Krzysztof Kozlowski. The purpose of the workshop was to expose high school students to control applications and research, to initiate such workshops as regular events at each of the two major conferences and also to initiate a series of similar workshops at every university which has an active research control group. The workshop brought undergraduates, graduates, professors, and high school students to describe control and systems ideas and technology, and to increase the general awareness of the importance of control and systems technology and its cross-disciplinary nature among high school students. Also, to show them that control education can take them everywhere, not only to engineering but also to biomedicine, finance, telecommunications, science, or even to philosophy of science. The workshop was a follow-up of the First NSF Workshop on Ideas and Technology of Control and Systems for High School Teachers of Mathematics and Science which as held at the 2000 ACC in Chicago. Seventy teachers selected from the list of 2000 Presidential Award winners representing most of the United States attended that workshop. It was recommended to organize more of that type of workshop for students and teachers. The Las Vegas Workshop was proceeded by two meetings with teachers, administrators, and students. Those meetings well prepared students for the workshop. Students attended the CDC plenary talk given by Stephen Boyd. Following the plenary talk, the workshop opened with a welcome from Bozenna Pasik-Duncan, the chair of the Technical Committee, Leonard Shaw, 2002 President of CSS, Cheryl Schrader, 2003 President-Elect, John Baillieul, 2002 Vice-President for Technical Activities, Umit Ozguner and Kenneth A. Loparo, co-chairs of the 2002 CDC, Kishan Baheti, National Science Foundation, and Linda Bushnell, secretary/administrator of the CSS. Presenters of control applications included: .
Enjoyable panel discussions were led by: .
The workshop generated hundreds of questions. The comments after the workshop were most rewarding. Among the many received, here are a few: "What a wonderful day. My students all were greatly impressed with the level of knowledge presented, the achievements of the young students and the many ways that math could be applied. Of course, the soccer team was the favorite, but among my students it seems that most of the presentations were a favorite with a smaller group of students. Education is a very hard sell in Las Vegas. We compete with some very high paying jobs that require only strong feet or maybe an extra curvaceous body so the kind of exposure you offered our students was most welcome. Thank you again for the invitation." "It was wonderful. The students had wonderful things to say about the speakers we heard at the Venetian. Thank you for taking the time to arrange this very worthwhile event for us. One of the teachers wrote an article about the event for our newsletter." Presentations motivated students for further interaction: "I talked to you at the 2002 Control Awareness Program. I discussed briefly about how I wanted to study epileptics and find a way to have them play video games. I wanted to search for a way to have them wear glasses or something to where they can see all of the flashes and play. I was told that this would be too dangerous because this could harm many subjects. Professor Pasik-Duncan, I ask you to help me start this. I am willing to find a way to help the many people that would like to have the fun that I have. I enjoyed talking with you and the presentations today were very impressive. I was very happy to attend this event. Thank you and I will be waiting for your reply." and from the school's newsletter: "The trip to the Venetian had a lot of information that at first seemed to not appeal to the Clark High School academy student. After a short time, with the excellent treatment from the hosts it promised to be a beneficial experience. I enjoyed, and found interesting, all of the presentations, although some were beyond the high school level. When presenters were lecturing students at the high school level, we could immediately see the wonders of what they were talking about to us. We saw everything from futuristic cars to ingenious displays of mechanitronics. We could instantly see the application to our education and what there is in the future. Of course, being interested in math and science, we could even imagine ideas of fascinating creations beyond what was presented." The workshop was the most memorable and successful event. It was truly a collaborative effort of so many people. We organized and will be organizing more of these types of workshops: The Second NSF Workshop for High School Teachers took place at the 2003 ACC in Denver and the Workshop for High School Students and Teachers will take place at 2003 CDC in Hawaii. We members of the Technical Committee on Control Education are excited about these workshops. Would you like to join us in these activities? Are you interested in organizing a special session at CDC? Please let us know and we will be more than grateful to you for helping us. The more people who are involved in Control Education, the better our society will be. Let us help Cheryl Schrader, our president, to meet her important goals related to control education (see her interview in the October issue of the Control Magazine). We fully agree with her that, "Control is a hidden discipline in times when it should be at the forefront of communication about technological advances. We need to be marketing how control applies to biotechnology, finance, transportation, communications, and network security. Along with providing summaries, synopses, and stimuli to our media and leaders, we should be speaking at elementary and secondary schools, interacting with teachers, providing courses on control for the non-engineer, and contributing to an awareness of how control is involved in everyday life. These are valuable activities. They require us to be "control proud" and to reach out to diverse groups and these are activities that will disseminate the joy and motivation we find in our own research." You will hear more about Control Education Activities this year in next issues of the Control Magazine. On behalf of the Technical Committee on Control Education, Bozenna Pasik-Duncan Acknowledgements: The Workshop organizers thank Kishan Baheti, Program Director, NSF, Jack Porter, University of Kansas Mathematics Department Chair, Len Shaw, President of CSS, Umit Ozguner and Kenneth Loparo, Co-chairs of 2002 CDC for providing important funds, hospitality, lunch, and conference bags, all presenters and panelists for outstanding presentations, Shirley McLees, the Magent Coordinator and all students from Clark High School for your generous collaboration and cooperation. Final thanks go to Dennis Bernstein for his excellent article on "Introducing Signals, Systems and Control in Grades K through 12" which served as handouts for all students and thanks for encouraging me to write this article.
reed@ku.edu |