Report of the Technical Committee on Control Education
Prepared by Bozenna Pasik-Duncan
November 11, 2004

One of major goals of the Committee on Control Education is:
To promote an increased awareness among students and teachers
of the importance and cross-boundary nature of control and systems technology.
The Committee continues organizing the Workshops for the middle and
high schools students and teachers at the major IEEE CSS sponsored conferences.
The Workshops took place in Chicago, Denver, Las Vegas, Maui,
Radom-Poland and will take place in Portland, Limasol-Cypress,
Prague-Czech Republic, Seville-Spain, San Diego, New York and many more. . . .

 

I.     The Committee met at the ACC'04 in Boston where it had a very productive meeting with representation of undergraduate and graduate students. The following issues were discussed in details:

  1. The NSF Workshop for high school students and teachers at the CDC in Maui, Hawaii was a big success due to a collaborative effort of many people including all on the operating committee. The feedback from students, teachers, and those who visited the workshop has been very positive, enthusiastic, and most rewarding.

  2. The article Bringing Control to Students and Teachers written by Molly Shor and Floyd Hanson, members of the Committee was published in June 2004 issue of the Control Systems Magazine. The article provides the detailed report that includes presentations, from the Workshop with over 250 participants: Maui students, Maui teachers of math and science and teachers who attended the previous workshops.

  3. The student/teacher evaluations of the Workshop were examined carefully. Some important comments and suggestions for improvement of the future workshops were made. Those include:

    • more hands on projects,
    • more ideas for science fair projects
    • more interactive sessions
    • demand for having access to power point presentations of speakers
    • demand for a control mentor network, to link mentors with high school and grade school students, and teachers. Matching is based on common interests in control.
    • demand for more workshops that will include undergraduate and graduate students.
    • One of many "Thank You" note from one of the teachers who participated in the Workshop:

      "I do not know how to find the words for how wonderful my trip was - I learned SO much and am forever grateful. As I write this, I am also working on a number of lesson plans based on the information I learned. You did an amazing job with the full-day workshop - I know how much work those are. On the whole, I felt that the students took away a lot of newly found enthusiasm for engineering. Now, that enthusiasm has to be cultivated by their teachers. I am working on condensing my notes into an outline form and will email it to you once I am done. Feel free to share it with the other teachers if you'd like to. I would love to help you put on your next one so please, keep me in mind! I could certainly put together some pre and post activities and assessments and would enjoy doing it. Is it possible for we teachers to receive the PowerPoint presentations from the presenters?"

  4. The committee prepared the announcement submitted to the CSM indicating the new control education project which will expand the high school students + high school teachers workshops, by involving undergraduates and graduates, in the next important workshop at the ACC'05. The ACC'05 control education mini track is the new most challenging project, emphasizing the vertical education by involving graduates, undergraduates and high school students together with mentors, advisors and teachers combining with the horizontal aspect of control education by showing a broad spectrum of control applications including new applications to bioscience, biomedicine and finance.

  5. The following Announcement has been distributed through different networks including the WiC.

    Attention Undergraduate and Graduate Control Students:

    The AACC, CSS and IFAC Control Education Committees jointly invite submissions for a one day mini-conference to be attended by high school math, science and technology students and teachers during the ACC'05 in Portland, Oregon. Graduate students are invited to submit for a poster session and for classroom materials for high school students. Undergraduates students, in particular those involved in the NSF REU programs, are invited to submit for a poster session. There will be monetary prizes in each category for the best poster presentation or the best classroom material.

    The deadline for submissions is December 1, 2004 with notification by January 15, 2005.
    Submissions have to be endorsed by a student's project advisor.

II.     Bozenna Pasik-Duncan organized the First Workshop on Control for High School students and teachers for the High School on Automation in Radom, Poland, in June 2004. The Workshop was a big success. The plan is to organized follow up workshop in June of 2005.

III.     Fifty copies of the Control Systems Magazine have been distributed among teachers who participated in previous workshops.

IV.     The Committee established partnership with the IFAC Control Committee. The proposal for the one day long Workshop for High School Students and Teachers on "The Power of Control Systems" and the panel on "The future "Brain Trust" for Control Engineering." The goal is to carry on the model of well developed by the Committee workshop and organize a similar one at the IFAC Congress in Prague to make the field of automatic control more attractive for Czech youngsters.

V.     The Committee accepted the invitation to provide technical sponsorship For the 9th symposium IFAC on "Automated Systems Based on Human Skill and Knowledge." This event will take place the 22-24 MAY 2006 in Nancy, in the east of France, jointly with an other IFAC event, INCOM'06, "Information Control Problems in Manufacturing," which will be held the 17-19 MAY 2006 in Saint-Etienne in France.

VI.     The Committee accepted the invitation to organize the workshops for High School Students and Teachers at the following conferences:

ACC 05, ACC 06, ACC 07
MED 05
CDC 05

VII.     The selected teachers who have been attending all workshops are involved in preparation of the manuscript entitled "What did we learn from the Workshops." They will also collect "My Reflections from the Workshop" from all teachers, participants of the workshops. A new article for the Control Systems Magazine will be prepared as a part of the project. Another part of the project will be a well prepared assessment of workshops.

VIII.     The Committee considers writing the NSF proposal for Travel Grant for High School Teachers to attend ACCs and CDCs. The Workshops played an important part in growing interest in attending conference on control by high school teachers of Science, Technology and Math, ( STEM ).

IX.     The Committee has established partnership with Standing Committee on Women in Control. The goal is to attract more girls to engineering with the focus on control as well as assist college female students to stay in control area. The Committee will assist the WiC on preparation of Travel Grant Program.

X.

  1. The committee is in the process of collecting the proposals from each member of the Committee for his/her goals for the committee, new initiatives, new visions.

  2. The committee is in the process of improving its web page.

  3. The committee is planning to establish close collaboration with other technical committees.

  4. The committee plans to establish new partnership with the SIAM, the Group on Systems and Control.

 

Acknowledgements:

The Committee would like to thank all officers of the CSS and the organizers of the conferences for their tremendous support and assistance provided for the Committee's activities. The Committee wouldn't have achieved goals without their continuous generous support. Very Special thanks go to Miroslav Krstic, Vice President for Technical Activities for his strong support, encouragement and very highly appreciated recognition for the committee's hard work. As the chair of the committee I thank all members of the committee for their hard work and for collaborative effort in reaching the goals.

 

Professor Bozenna Pasik-Duncan
Department of Mathematics
University of Kansas
405 Snow Hall
Lawrence, KS 66045
phone: 785-864-5162 or 3651
fax: 785-864-5255
e-mail - bozenna@math.ukans.edu
http://www.math.ukans.edu/ksacg/Bozenna.html
http://www.math.ukans.edu/ksacg/index.html

http://www.ieeecss.org/TAB/Technical/education/links.html

 

11/27/04