Outreach

The PI has already volunteered through the Technology Education and Literacy in Schools (TEALS) program (see https://www.tealsk12.org/) to co-teach a new computationally-related course on "Introduction to Computer Science" in Summit Academy North High School in Romulus, MI, in 2017-2018. The PI will educate, attract, and inspire students to fascinating possibilities in computational science and mathematics to be chosen as their future academic major. Romulus is a historically disadvantaged, low-income, and less-educated neighborhood with 42.3% of population being African-American (http://public-schools.startclass.com/l/43495/Summit-Academy-North-High-School). The course materials can be found on GitHub (https://github.com/TEALSK12/introduction-to-computer-science). The PI has already attended an 8-hour TEALS Volunteer Training on July 8th and will attend another in-person 8-hour training on July 29th in Southfield, MI. This outreach activity will create a ripple effect that gives the underrepresented students new opportunities to become more familiar to MSU's new undergraduate program in the CMSE department and all future opportunities in Dr. Zayernouri's research group after graduation.

The PI is already involved with the office of Recruitment, Scholarship, and K-12 Outreach at MSU, where he attended and shadowed four High School Engineering Institute (HSEI) boot camp instructors to observe and pilot experience teaching high-school students. The PI will develop a session on ``iPython Jupyter for Computational Modeling" in summer 2018. This outreach component will be coupled with the previous one through inviting the high-school students of Summit Academy North High School to visit MSU in summer 2018 to foster their knowledge and interest in computational mathematics, moreover, to be introduced to MSU's new recruitment opportunities in the CMSE department and specifically in Dr. Zayernouri's research group.

The PI has a strong record of engaging pre-college students in outreach related to CMSE, beginning in 2014 at Brown University. The PI designed and taught a one-week Senior SPARK course on "Introduction to Special Relativity" for both middle-school and high-school students through STEM and Pre-College Education Programs at Brown University in summer 2014 and 2015.

The PI has already partnered to develop a computationally-oriented workshop for underrepresented (mostly African-American and Hispanic) high-school students in Michigan. With the coordination of Teresa Isela Vander Sloot, the director of Women in Engineering, Recruitment and K-12 at MSU, the CMSE department is going to host a group of 10-15 underrepresented female high-school students in September 2019 and 2021.