MDOT-TRAC Opportunity for Michigan STEM Teachers

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From Brenda Kragt -

A session has been scheduled to show teachers the tools and exercises involved with the MDOT-TRAC (Transportation and Civil Engineering) Program.  All exercises are aligned to educational benchmarks.  Training is scheduled for:
Date:  Monday, January 22, 2018
Time:  8:00am-3:30pm
Location:  1501 E Kilgore Rd, Kalamazoo MI 49001

Teachers (grades 6-12) who attend will receive two modules of their choice.  Materials are replenished by MDOT.  Also, students in 7-12th grade become eligible to participate in our annual Bridge Challenge, and graduating seniors who’ve used the tools can apply for our Civil Engineering Summer Internship.  As always, there is no cost for the training or modules.  We’d love to see more schools/classrooms involved with TRAC!  

The opportunities for both exposure to civil engineering (for middle and high school classrooms) and for students to acquire summer jobs with MDOT are growing, are free, and include:

1.       Use of MDOT Transportation and Civil Engineering (TRAC) exercises/modules with replenishment of supplies--free to 6-12th grade math, science, STEM, and civics teachers who register/attend TRAC training.

2.       Student participation in annual Michigan Bridge Challenge (7th-12th grade).  Teams of three students each (unlimited number of teams per school) can register for the State and/or National competitions.  Every team who submits a complete written proposal is invited to the State finals.  This year eighteen teams (double that of previous years) will be invited to the Nationals in Tennessee.  Last year, seven of those 18 teams were from Michigan and went to Nationals in Maine.  At least one teacher from your school must complete TRAC training for teams to register for the competition. [NOTE:  The deadline to register was in November.  The Challenge is an annual event, so your students could compete next year.]

3.       Jobs with Youth Development and Mentoring Program (working 10 weeks each summer performing landscape/labor in Benton Harbor, Kalamazoo, Battle Creek, Albion, and other areas).  Students also receive exposure, during roughly 20% of work hours, to various mentoring opportunities.  Encourage students age 16-18 years old, with a 2.5 or better GPA to consider this.  The jobs will be posted in early March.

4.       Engineering internship for graduating seniors.  MDOT plans to fill several civil engineering summer internships in Coloma, Kalamazoo and Marshall Transportation Service Centers.  The seven week internship positions will be posted in May.  For students committed to a civil engineering major, most CE colleges in Michigan continue to offer a $2500 CE college scholarship to students who worked as MDOT interns.   Applicants must utilize at least one TRAC exercise in middle or high school to qualify for the internship.

For access to options 1, 2, and 4, above, students must use the MDOT-TRAC tools.  Teachers who attend the training receive two of the seven modules shown below.  To register one or more teachers, contact me by email or phone.

In a brief synopsis, here’s what each MDOT-TRAC module covers:
1.       Environmental (settling and filtering using flume and screens.  Students learn about their impact on the environment and examine environmental issues involved with highway planning.)
2.       Motion (Newton’s law of motion, energy, impulse using motion detector, impulse pendulum, Plexiglas track)
3.       Magnetic Levitation (reaction, polarity, aerodynamics, friction, Newton’s First and Second Laws of Motion, graphing using magnetic levitation foam vehicles and magnetic Plexiglas track)
4.       Traffic Technology (reaction and perception, velocity/deceleration, braking distance, electrical theory using circuits, traffic dilemma zones, graphing yellow light time, and Excel nested if statements.  Uses hot wheels track, Vernier photogates, fundamentals of highway safety and traffic signal design)
5.       Bridge Building (structural concepts, tension, compression, deflection, elastic modulus, moments of inertia, member failure by bending, shear force, torsion, equilibrium, using method of joints to understand/calculate force on individual members, structural stability of shapes, displacement constraint, statics, bridge design/build using 2D, 3D, or CAD design.  Students practice math and science concepts a structural engineer uses to create a bridge.)
6.       Safety (critical thinking, decision making, data reliability using posters (includes concepts such as congestion, traffic volume, and sign distance in relation to safe speed), and Interactive Physics software (provides exposure to physics involved in traffic accidents, including the effect of a collision with a fixed object and impact of a vehicle hitting a crash barrier)
7.       Road Design and Construction (data visualization, traffic flow, radius, curvature, laws of sines, calculating land cost, road design, societal impact of transportation systems)

Brenda's Contact Information:
MDOT-TRAC, Southwest Region
kragtb@michigan.gov

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