Increasing student interest in STEM via the Kensington Kinetic Sculpture Derby

This paper will explore a project associated with the National Science Foundation STEM GK-12 Program at Drexel University titled “Catalyzing STEM Education via the NAE Grand Challenges” (http://www.engineeringchallenges.org) that serves to address the need for more STEM educated workers. Specifically, the Drexel NSF STEM GK-12 program pairs ten College of Engineering graduate students (Fellows) with ten School District of Philadelphia high school teachers to help introduce engineering concepts to high school students through the context of the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) Grand Challenges. This work in progress explores a high school vehicle design project as part of the Kensington Kinetic Sculpture Derby (KKSD) facilitated by a fellow/teacher partnership at Central High School, an urban school in Philadelphia comprised of 40% underrepresented groups in the STEM fields. A unique feature of the project is that students from the D3 Design Technology course were grouped in an interdisciplinary team with other students from World History and Sculpture classes to develop a vehicle based on the structure of a bicycle.