Introduction — An important challenge to setting up a nanoscience community outreach program is to decide the most effective way to reach large numbers of K-12 students and to encourage them to pursue careers in science and engineering. While student workshops and campus tours have their place, they are relatively inefficient vehicles for reaching and inspiring large number of students. The EPSCoR Community Outreach program takes a different approach. It concentrates on educating K-12 teachers in nanotechnology and materials in order to provide them tools that they could take back to their classrooms and laboratories. This approach ultimately reaches many more students, provides motivation and new skill resources to teachers and enables teachers to teach science at the cutting edge of nanotechnology.

The middle school years provide the most critical opportunity to instill a sense of wonder in students about math, science and engineering. Therefore, as also recommended by the AAAS Review Panel, we chose to target the nano workshops largely at middle school and high school teachers.

Thrust Areas — Two activities were selected for the outreach program. One is a nanomaterials oriented course at NMT as part of the Master of Science for Teachers (MST) program, which is conducted at NMT each summer. The second is fall workshops held at different State locations during the fall semester of each plan year. While the theme of these workshops is nanoscience, nanoscience is a subset of the larger discipline of materials science. Since most of the teachers attending the workshops are not very conversant with either discipline, one objective is to provide the teachers with a working introduction to both materials science and nanoscience. Another is to provide the teachers with hands on experience and materials and experiments that they can take back to their own classrooms.

Management and Evaluation — Vannetta Perry, Director, Nano Community Education Outreach Program, provides coordination for the outreach program to assure a uniform level of high performance and accomplishment. Dr. Perry, who coordinates closely with the Nanoscience Executive Director, organizes and coordinates not only the workshops but also the Nano course presented as part of the NMT MST program. Dr. Perry also conducts evaluations of the effectiveness of each workshop and the summer Nanoscience MST course. The results of these student evaluations and the follow-up polling of the student participants determines how effectively the teachers have assimilated the information provided and implemented it in their own classrooms. It also enables the Director to better plan and organize future outreach activities.