Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT) graduates - predominantly women - are increasingly hired into roles that demand a solid understanding and appreciation for green and sustainably designed product development techniques and challenges. In this presentation, we outline a coordinated program of teaching methodologies; faculty development and K-12/industry partnerships focused on an innovative curriculum in green chemistry and materials science for non-major 2 and 4 year college students. This work extends earlier efforts completed as part of the NSF funded program: <i>Advancing Design-related Technological Education: A Three-way Bridge (TECH-FIT)</i>. Through this program, we seek to ensure that our students possess sufficiently rigorous STEM skills and increase the number of women in high level, design industry-related STEM employment.<br/><br/>The program comprises three coordinated efforts. First, we focus are curricula on “real-world” examples (e.g. zero net waste product development, permaculture farming, water purification and renewable energy) to establish a relevant context for the student while retaining technical rigor. As many of our students tend to be “visual” learners, we extend the curricula with an image and example repository coupled to the traditional curricula. Second, we focus on faculty development programs and tools spanning secondary education as well as full-time and adjunct FIT faculty. Finally, we will discuss the development of a three-way (Secondary schools→College→Industry) “bridge” to support the coherent application of tools and curricula to improve learning outcomes in science courses for non-major students. We will discuss results to date for this program and our plans for future development.

Educational innovation in design-related STEM through interdisciplinary sustainable science education

251st National Meeting (2016)

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