Optics Program Widens Focus

A $1.7 Million, three-year NSF optics grant for MESA to implement an optics-based educational enrichment program for educationally disadvantaged middle school students widens its focus this year with expanded student education and teacher training events.

More than 200 people participated in the first MESA Day Extravaganza Event in December at Willowbrook Middle School, served by the UC Irvine MESA Center. Students, parents, teachers, optical professionals and guests participated in optics-based engineering demonstrations and projects, including building an air-powered vehicle using optics principles. Another event for the entire student body is planned for April.

Now in its second year, Hands-On Optics (HOO) is an initiative to design and implement an optics-based educational enrichment program for middle school students in the United States, especially female and minority students who typically have not had access to science and engineering resources in the past. Through a collaboration of MESA, the International Society for Optical Engineering, the Optical Society of America, and the National Optical Astronomy Observatory, HOO introduces students to the science of optics and excites them about science by immersing them in optics-based activities. The program also features optics professionals working side-by-side with teachers and students, and is designed to actively engage parents, teachers, school districts, and communities.

The first year focused on planning, outreach and implementation of the first three modules of a six-module optics course for pilot campuses at UC Irvine, CSU Fullerton and the University of Southern California, as well as the initial design of an optics education website. This year, trainings and student events expand to reach wider audiences, planning continues for delivery of the second three course modules, and the website goes into beta testing. In 2006, coordinators hope to deliver all six modules to tens of thousands of students and their teachers at MESA sites throughout California and nationwide, as well as to complete and launch the website.

Teachers from the Los Angeles metropolitan area in March participated in an intensive, three-day training workshop on implementing the first three of six training modules. Schools from 12 more California MESA Centers will be eligible to send instructors to the sessions this summer. The program is being beta tested at the Washington State MESA USA Program and will soon be adopted by the New York Hall of Science.

MESA Schools Program Co-Director Ramona Wilson said the program is unique in several ways.

“This kind of partnership between an educational services organization such as MESA and the optical societies is unprecedented,” said Wilson. “It allows teachers to work side-by-side with industry to do exciting, cutting-edge work in the optics field, and it raises awareness among students of the optics field as a potential career path.”

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