Learned lessons from the first year research experiences for teachers program

We have successfully finished our summer program in our National Science Foundation (NSF) supported Research Experiences for Teachers (RET) Site entitled "Multidisciplinary Engineering Research for Rural Michigan's Future." The summer program was 6 weeks long and hosted 7 inservice teachers (high school science) and 5 pre-service teachers (integrated science majors). Participants are split into 6 groups and teamed up with an engineering faculty and an engineering undergraduate student each. During their 40 hours/week work schedule, participants have worked on faculty supervised research projects for half their time and the rest was reserved for classroom unit plans that participants would work on developing. Several guest speakers and professional coaches helped us during the professional and curriculum development activities. We are currently working on developing follow-up plans during the academic year where preservice teachers will implement classroom activities under in-service teachers' supervision and these activities will be used during high school visits to the campus. In this paper, we will give the details about the RET Site's management and discuss our experiences from lessons learned during the first year. Weekly survey results will be analyzed and interpreted. Reflections from participants, faculty, and undergraduate students will be presented. External evaluation scheme will be introduced and results will be given. Each project will be briefly introduced and outcomes will be shared. Finally, we will conclude with the overall lessons we learned from this experience and discuss next summer's plans as a result of our analysis and self-reflections. We hope that our shared experiences (struggles, accomplishments, and mistakes, etc.) will help the engineering education community develop more effective relationships with K-12 by using the models we implemented.