Mission Possible

WSU’s Engineering Education Research Center is home to five projects involving nine faculty members with grants totaling $2.7 million from the National Science Foundation.

Prior to the center’s creation in January 2005, a couple of  small, independent projects looked promising, but the collaboration behind the EERC — fast becoming a driving force in research-based engineering education — took flight with an airport conversation.

“We were on our way back from our Mission to DC,” said Gerald Maring, professor of education. Maring was part of a team of faculty members, including engineering professor Denny Davis, who had been meeting with program officers in DC to learn more about obtaining federal research grants.

“Sitting in the airport, we decided to form an interdisciplinary center, the Engineering Education Research Center, with the goal of studying — and improving — student interest in engineering and science careers,” he said. That goal became a reality in January 2005 with Davis and Maring as co-directors.

The largest of the five projects, known as CREAM (Culturally Relevant Engineering Applications in Mathematics) is funded by a $1.5 million NSF grant and launched this fall.

It’s the realization of what Davis and Maring envisioned in that airport conversation.

Talking with program officers at federal agencies, in this case at the National Science Foundation, is crucial, Davis said. In fact, that is what convinced them of the need to formalize their interdisciplinary collaboration by creating a research center. But, sometimes simply talking with colleagues from other departments can open doors.

That usefulness to faculty — and to the university — is exactly why the Missions to DC program was begun in the fall of 2002, explained Jim Petersen, vice provost for research.

“With the Mission to DC program, we hoped to increase the level of scholarship here, to enhance the reputation of WSU, to build collaboration among our faculty, to help fund individual projects and to help faculty better understand how funding works,” Petersen said.  “We expected to catalyze change through the program — change that would implement the strategic goals of the university.”

From 2002 through the spring of 2006, 82 faculty members have traveled to Washington, D.C., to meet with federal officials. In April 2006, six faculty members traveled to New York to meet with funding officials there in the first official Mission to NY.

“Humanities and arts faculty are largely funded by private foundations, not public agencies,” Petersen explained, and more of those foundations are in New York.