Educators from across the state came to East Carolina University to enhance their STEM teaching strategies during the Engineering and Technology Symposium: Pathways to Enhance K-12 STEM Education.
The symposium featured workshops, keynote speakers, panel discussions, display tables and hands-on activities that allowed teachers to discover innovative methods to integrate real-world technology applications into their classrooms. Networking with fellow educators and ECU College of Engineering and Technology faculty provided more opportunities to enhance K-12 student education in science, technology, engineering and math.
In the Science and Technology Building, teachers separated grape Kool-Aid into red and blue liquids through chromatography, smiling and laughing at their results.
“I really enjoyed this. I’ve never done anything like this before. It was cool,” said Lindsey Stalls, STEM coordinator at Eastern Elementary School in Greenville. “I like the visual of it. I think the students would love it. I think they would be really engaged.”
Chromatography is a process to separate components of a mixture. It is particularly important in the pharmaceutical industry, where exact measurements of substances are crucial to good health care.
“This is a concept I’ve taught many times, but I’ve never been able to give students a really good visual of it, so this was a new way of seeing something I’ve taught,” said Nicole Scuron, STEM coordinator at Lake Forest Elementary School in Greenville. “I think it would really engage students.”
Robin Coger, provost at ECU with bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degrees in mechanical engineering, welcomed the teachers and thanked them for helping shape the future.
“What math teachers did and what science teachers did really made a difference for me,” Coger said. “It made me excited about what I was learning in those classes, and it made me curious to want to learn more. That’s what being an educator is all about. It’s having ripple effects coming from what we do and spreading outside of us in positive ways that affect so many.”
Shana Deans, a STEM instructor at H.J. MacDonald Middle School in New Bern, attended a session designed to teach students how to build houses out of cardboard. A leaf blower is used to subject the houses to a simulated hurricane, offering students instant feedback on their construction design and techniques.
“I have always wanted to do something with hurricanes in my class, but I just had not figured out what,” Deans said. “In New Bern, we get hit with all kinds of stuff. Some of them remember Hurricane Florence (in 2018), and Florence really did a number in New Bern. We still have some kids not in their homes to this day.”
She said the symposium offered a short drive from New Bern with big rewards.
“I’m always looking for new ideas and learning different things,” Deans said. “I’m always trying to upgrade and change curriculum for the students.”
Scuron called STEM education crucial to student development.
“We believe STEM is strategies that engage minds, and so getting students as engaged in their learning as early as possible and exposing them to as many opportunities as we can is really important,” she said.
Gueye receives Fulbright to teach, research politics of feminism, wifehood
ECU’s Marame Gueye has won a competitive Fulbright U.S. Scholar Program award for the 2024-25 academic year. She will teach and conduct research at the Université Cheikh Anta Diop de Dakar (UCAD) in Sénégal, Africa.
“I was elated when I got the news,” she said.
Gueye is an associate professor in the Thomas Harriot College of Arts and Sciences Department of English and focuses on African and African diaspora literature. She earned her bachelor’s and master’s degrees from UCAD and her doctoral degree from Binghamton University, State University of New York.
“Dr. Marame Gueye is a highly engaged scholar-activist. Her scholarly work cuts across the disciplines of literature, film, African languages, cultural studies, and women and gender studies,” said Lida Cope, professor and chair of English. “Her scholarship intertwines with her activism focused on women’s rights, migration, translation, education and public engagement for social justice, and she’s considered one of the most vocal feminist activists in her native country of Sénégal. Her upcoming Fulbright stay at Cheikh Anta Diop University of Dakar is truly well deserved.”
Since joining ECU in 2007, Gueye has taught graduate and undergraduate courses in world literature, African literature, and global women’s writing and the politics of feminism. Her research interests include African women’s art, multicultural and transnational literature and immigration studies. Her articles have appeared in Research in African Literatures, African Studies Review, the Journal of Pan African Studies and many other international publications.
“The benefits of a Fulbright Scholar Award extend beyond the individual recipient. Fulbright Scholars raise the profile of their home institutions,” said Marianne Craven, acting deputy assistant secretary for academic programs in the Fulbright program’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs.
Originally from Sénégal, and now having spent 27 years in the United States, Gueye will return to the country as a U.S. citizen in early September. Beginning Oct. 1, she will teach and conduct a 10-month-long research project, “Discourses of Wifing.” The project will focus on how Senegalese women think about wifehood as a service they render to men. Gueye will examine the concept of wifehood and scholarly activism surrounding gender violence through art, films, music, social media and soccer.
She said the country recently elected its fifth president, the youngest president in the region at the age of 44. He has two wives who will move into the presidential palace with him, so Gueye said she will include a chapter on wifehood through the lens of polygamy.
In addition, Gueye is returning to the department where she earned her undergraduate degrees. She will teach a course in multicultural women’s writing and the politics of feminism, one of the first courses on gender in the department.
“I am excited to return to my alma mater, the place that forged my intellectual path,” Gueye said. “I have taught there during summer trips and the students are eager to learn, so I look forward to the experience.”
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