 So welcome everybody. Today we are going to have just a 30-minute session as part of our Information Gathering session series for the Committee on Ocean Acoustics Education and Expertise. Over the past month or two we've had multiple Information Gathering sessions on workforce development, early career, ocean acoustics education specifically, higher ed education. Meredith, our speaker today, was not able to make it during our scheduled higher ed Information Gathering panel and we really wanted to get her insight into higher education challenges and successes or thoughts in interdisciplinary science. And Ocean Acoustics is truly interdisciplinary and we know that we are a small field but very interdisciplinary field and was really hoping to in the higher education panel gain some insight into what's working in other highly interdisciplinary fields so that we may be able to recommend or model or integrate some of those ideas into ocean acoustics education and expertise. And so with that I'm going to introduce myself in the committee and then I will turn it over to Meredith Portsmore from Tufts to introduce herself, her organization and some thoughts that she may have to kick off discussion on higher education challenges in interdisciplinary areas. So I'm Jen Mix's old. I'm the chair of the committee and I'm at the University of New Hampshire so not too far from Tufts where I'm the director for the Center for Acoustics Research and Education. I'm joined by Andrea Anguiles from Penn State University, Art Bagger from MIT, Liesl Hoddling from Eidos Education, Wu Zhang Li from the University of Washington, Carolyn Ruple from USGS, Gail Scoproft from the University of Rhode Island, and Preston Wilson from the University of Austin Texas. And at this point why don't I ask Meredith to just introduce herself and her organization and then I will move on to the statement of task for this committee to help frame our discussion moving into the last 20 minutes or so. So let me stop. Do you have slides to share Meredith? I do. Would that be helpful probably? Let me stop sharing and I will let you share yours and then I'll bring up my last slide. Great. All right. Now I'll just do a few just to give folks a sense of who we are and what we do. So it's great to meet you all. My name's Meredith Quartzmore. I direct a center at Tufts as part of the School of Engineering Center for Engineering Education and Outreach, where our mission is to create the next generation of problem solvers through research-based experiences. My own background spans mechanical engineering, English, education, all of the above, and so in my current role I'm a pretty much half a researcher and half an administrator doing different projects in research, supporting outreach across the School of Engineering, and all kinds of educational programs from our engineering education minor to cellular agriculture. It's my first USDA grant this year where we're supporting outreach and workforce development for some of the PIs in that space. We are obviously really excited. We frame a lot of our work around NAE's global challenges, thinking that the next generation of citizens, regardless of their path actually, our mission is not exclusively about workforce development. Obviously that's a great thing to happen, but we also want to think much more broadly about, you know, we want all of our politicians to understand the experience of engaging in an engineering design process, the idea of criteria constraints, and all of the iteration that goes into engineering. And so we think engineering is really a wonderful tool to not only for all citizens, but also to disrupt some of the pedagogies that we see in K-12, right, where we're following directions and repeating things versus being creative and doing that piece. And we think about that, right, whether if children is really broad, whether they're in first grade or their first year of engineering, that they need to have practice innovating. So if we want folks to be doing this kind of forward thinking, we want them to be doing it all along and not get into the practice of just memorizing and repeating what others say. And so that's really, that's really where we are. We think a lot about the all students piece. We're working trying to broaden our work in thinking about all kinds of students. We just received a new grant from National Science Foundation, focusing on students with autism. We work in a lot of the urban communities that surround Tufts, and really just thinking about this in different ways, and looking for evidence to support what we do through research, as well as innovation in that space, because engineering education is fairly new. So it's kind of, it's definitely an interdisciplinary field in itself. We are an interdisciplinary center. So we have folks from all over the place. So historically, we started with mechanical engineers. We still have quite a few of those, but we have faculty from computer science, education, human development, and even the electrical engineering space. So definitely a lot of different folks coming together to do this work in more of an umbrella-like format. So I am the director, but I do not dictate everyone's research agenda, right? We share space, we collaborate, we share resources, and then look to see how we can advance things in that area. And an important part of what we do is really being connected to practice, whether that's being in a pre-college classroom, whether that's being in an undergraduate engineering classroom, so that we're studying the teaching and learning there, we're creating new tools and resources for there, but then also turning that into usable curricula, websites, et cetera. And for us, it's been really generative because if you're doing research to practice, then you also get to do practice to research where you're with collaborators, co-designers, and all kinds of folks who are saying, hey, you know, actually we don't really understand this or this is something that we really need. So that has been supporting a lot of our DIJ work as well. We take a really strong asset-based framing to all our work, which is really important in terms of thinking about the folks in this process as having a lot of resources to do their job and thinking of our work as really enabling that. So what are the tools? What are the resources that they need to be able to be doing this? So we very much push back on deficit-based stances towards teachers and learning across the spectrum, where we see things like pacing guys and step-by-step binders and things that take away the autonomy of the educator. So, yeah, I'll just do a little bit more quickly. We've really been pushing on that in terms of, right, it's not natural to engineering necessarily in our space that it's expansive, inclusive, and thinking about assets. So that's where drawing on our collaborations with educators and education researchers, that's really powerful. We also think about tools and interventions, which is where we can draw in our engineering and computer science folks to think about, well, could we make a different way of doing this? Could we think about it in another kind of way so that could look like a new tool that some of our grad students are working on so that young students can learn new ideas and artificial intelligence? It could look like a tool for teachers, one that we spun off many years ago, just helping them do more responsive work in the classroom, and then always doing research. So we do a lot of interviews, we do a lot of observations, and really push on methodologies to explain why not necessarily just come up with the course race data of this did better than this. So, yeah, so we think about the think, invent, discover, change the world. It's really our jobs to be enablers of students. And so we do a lot of things across the spectrum, and I can talk more about any of them. Well, I was going to say, because we want to really focus on discussion with you, this would be a great place for me to share with you the statement of task of our committee and maybe ask you to pull from that slide some successes. Would that be okay? Absolutely. Awesome. So let me share this screen one more time. Are you seeing the statement of work here? Excellent. So this is the statement of work that our committee is tasked with. And this is our discussion today. We really like to see it move into not just ocean acoustics, education, philosophies, and so forth, but interdisciplinary science. And that sort of leads into exploration of strategies to raise the profile of careers in ocean acoustics number four. And here's where that intersection between education, training, workforce, recruitment, and then retention comes along. So I'll just start off our discussion. Ocean acoustics is a very highly interdisciplinary field. We pull from engineering, physical sciences, earth sciences, biological sciences, ecology. So we have subfields that are very niche specific in ocean acoustics, and we have the larger ocean acoustics field. In general, I would say a large proportion of our community never thought they'd really end up in ocean acoustics because they didn't know it was a career at the time when they were either even entering undergraduate or maybe even graduate school. So I was hoping to hear from other fields on how they recruit people or even make people aware of highly interdisciplinary fields before college and grad school. So I'll stop sharing, and you can either share or answer however you like, and then I'll open it up to the committee to ask additional questions because we want to learn from you on what we can bring to our field that may help us raise the visibility of ocean acoustics careers in education. Yeah, I mean, that's the classic, right? When the work in pre-college engineering education started in the 90s, that was one of the things that was attributed to that work was that students weren't aware of what engineering was before they got to college to make that decision. And so that is where a lot of the work is, right? Kind of showing off what it is, what it does, what it works like. I mean, that whole field has exploded over the last 20 years. It's a lot of work. I don't think it's been, despite being in it, I don't think it's been nearly as successful as the computer science movement, right? Which just had such huge buy-in and resources, you know, what is it called? Code for the day. And, you know, the big names behind it, you know, it's lower resources. It doesn't need to be hands-on. So I've always been like, well, wait, we were engineering ed was here first. So I think there's definitely, there's definitely space in there. Some of that is in the formal classroom, and some of it's in the informal classroom. And remembering that I know, so it's done all this before with very cool underwater things. So, so there is that space. I don't, I don't think there's nearly enough resources for students when they get to university to figure out. I mean, I know in our, even in Tufts, which is small, right? Our first year class is like 250, 275. And when they have, they all have to pick their major second semester of their first year. And they're like, I don't know, probably this, like, they don't learn anymore once they've gotten to college about what they should do. Some of the, some engineering schools, right, do a better job at this than Tufts in terms of having more of a survey in the first year. But it's still really hard. And the students who know most what they want to do are really, you know, they come in with some of that knowledge from a high school experience, from a summer experience that they've had. But it's definitely tricky. And I can imagine it's super tricky for you. Like, engineering has a really nice niche and identity, at least we know who's coming in. But I guess if you're reaching across disciplines that may be in different schools in different places, that seems like a really formidable challenge that I don't have a great answer for. Yeah, I see Andrea has her hand up and then Lisa. Yeah. And thank you, Meredith. That was actually a great segue into my question. So I think one of the things that I think about, hopefully not too ignorantly, when I think of engineering education is that in preparation for someone to get a degree in engineering education, you need background from pretty distinct areas, like you need a pretty robust understanding of education literature, but you still need to solidly understand what engineering students at all levels kind of go through. So I'm curious if you could comment on perhaps even pulling from your PhD experience from when you were a student, what some of the challenges or what the structure looks like in terms of making sure that you're getting all of that education. And if you can take that then to a programmatic level and running a program like that and elaborate on that, that'd be helpful. Yeah, I think it's really interesting. Most of the engineering ed programs that I interact with at Tufts and elsewhere are a lot of folks that have an undergraduate degree in engineering, some even a master's, and then they go on and do the education piece. So there isn't really that like sewing together at the bachelor's level. It's kind of like, hey, you have all these credentials, and it's a lot of people who feel disenfranchised and angry with the way engineering is being done that get into the education space. So yeah, so people are always like, oh, you should have more engineering than the PhD program. It's like, yeah, but I had whatever four years of engineering, I actually need to know how to do the education theory and the kinds of analysis that are appropriate here. So a lot of the programs do more of that, but maybe getting more into the pedagogical or the disciplinary things that have emerged. So reading the engineering education literature, getting into that space. So at a programmatic level, I can't think of anyone who was doing it in a different way. Sometimes folks don't have a formal background engineering ed, like I just had a friend go into Purdue, and he doesn't have a deep background engineering, but he was a teacher of engineering for years and years. So there's a mix there. We've done a little bit at the undergrad level. We double ed Tufts. There's a lot of interest in engineering ed. So we have a minor, so you can do some of that work. And you can all imagine how to navigate that with accreditation. It's a very small amount, but it's an interesting space to start. Education is particularly tricky, I think, because everybody knows how to do it, because everyone's been educated. Like I'm working in the cellular agriculture space, growing meat from cells right now on a project, which is also really interdisciplinary. And they're definitely thinking about how much you need to know. If you're in nutrition, how much do you need to know about the science? If you're in science, how much do you need to know about nutrition and consumer acceptance and things like that? So that one, that one's interesting. I don't know if that totally answered your question, but... No, I think it's pretty helpful. And just to make sure I got it right, so part of what you were saying is that really a lot of the engineering education degree-wise is happening at the upper level. So we're talking doctrine masters at least, but it's not really at the undergrad, so you're kind of counting on whatever background they're coming in, covering some of it, and then you can focus on the piece that is normally lacking. Fair enough? Yeah, I think that's fair from my point of view. Great, thank you. Great, thank you. Lisa, you have your hand up. You're on mute. Yes, so it'd be super helpful if I came off there. Meredith, I'm going to put you on the spot, and you might not know this at all, but you sparked something in my head when you mentioned the whole survey courses at undergrad level in engineering, that freshman year to keep them engaged, et cetera. Is there any... So that's basically... I was at Stevens when that movement started and I did a lot of those survey courses for the freshmen, but then I left the engineering education space. Is there full time? Is there any results from that? Because that kind of sparked something in my head. Wouldn't that be interesting if acoustics education could get in that game and offer those pre-packaged survey course mini-experiences that highlighted acoustics in some way, shape, or form? Because that's where we did the underwater Lego stuff, you know, was in that survey space, and that got a lot of students thinking differently about the core courses that they were already taking. So I didn't know if there was... It's a two-part question I got. Well, one question and an idea of, is there any data to back that up? Is that still a thing? Did it work, so to speak? And then the thought for the committee, if it did work, if that's still a thing, could we think about maybe suggesting that that's a viable pathway to pursue to create these acoustics experiences? That's a great question. I don't know the answer to that. I know, right, we haven't seriously disrupted the... What I do know is, right, if you look at the data or the latest one I've seen, we haven't seriously disrupted engineering categories, right? Like, you know, like electrical women are still underrepresented, you know, like mechanical is crazy, you know, mechanical and CS are still crazy popular and exploding. So I don't know how much it disrupts the... What students choose, but again, I'm not an expert there. I can't think of a study there, but I don't spend a ton of time there. It's super interesting. I mean, I think, right, they tend to be these... What one of my friends calls race, cars, rockets and robots experiences where it's like, very shits on, we're gonna get you excited. And I think we have a harder time. Definitely when I've worked with folks in chemical and biomedical engineering, we have a much harder time thinking about those survey experiences for things that are not as Lego-ified. And that's a really big gap is that it's really hard for students to figure out what that looks like. And then on the science aside, I don't think... At least it's tough. They don't really get any of that. If you go into physics or biology or chemistry, you better have a good idea of what you want to do, right? Because there's much less career orientation, it's tough there to be able to say you could do this or that. Like in our first year classes, which don't, you know, like you pick one, you might pick mechanical, you might pick civil, and then you do a whole semester on that to try it out like people will bring in people from the field and they talk about it and they get to try out and see what it looks like. So I feel like there's something for y'all to capitalize on there. So I know my dear friends at the vet school are always like, in top of that school is like 99% female. And right, super popular. And like that connection to the ocean and things people care about seems like a really interesting space that some students definitely don't know exist. Sorry, I didn't mean to put you on the spot. I was just curious because... It's a fair question. Thank you. I wanted to just follow up on some of the answers that I heard you. You were definitely talking about fields that are either more male dominated or female dominated. Is there anything that you do within your center that is DEI focused specifically to try and reach out to groups that haven't historically been part of the dominating sector or whatever scale you look at that on in your area? Yeah. I mean, a couple of things we do in that space is more in the pre-college space. One is just thinking about the kinds of activities we do in terms of how everybody loves an engineering competition. But there's actually interesting evidence that's not the best way to engage a lot of folks. It just ends up being like, oh, I'm not good at this, especially for our female identifying folks. We use a lot of our resources to make sure we're going into communities that don't have access to these kind of materials. And again, trying to not be about bringing them to engineering, but saying, hey, what do you know about your community? Using those asset and resource driven pedagogies to say, hey, you know a lot about your community. You know a lot about X, Y, or Z. How do we build upon your resources to think and do engineering in a way that acknowledges that space? My colleague, Kristen Wendell, did one with the MBTA in Boston because that's something that Boston kids know a lot about, how the transit system works and what that looks like. Other people have done things connected to estuaries or environmental issues that are actually in the community. So that's a lot of what we're trying to say, use the resources that folks have. That's a great answer, especially identifying and hadn't thought about this, the non competitive aspect of things, because a lot of the things like the National Ocean Sciences Bowl, which we can highlight ocean acoustics in, it's still a competition, right? And so I never really thought about the downside of large scale competitive atmospheres for recruiting people to a particular field. That was a really, it's very insightful. I'll share one other thing that was from research I did on a personal NSF funded project last year, is we interviewed third to fifth graders about their engineering identity and were like, how do you, how good do you think you are at engineering? We are doing even these non competitive things, but they're like school has them so attuned to like, well, you know, Lisa always gets it right on the first try. So she's really good at this, but I don't, so right, even like, you know, so having like creative spaces feels really important to make everybody seem like there's a possibility, right? The spaghetti bridge where there's a clear winner, right? Even things that aren't like highly competitive, but still within a classroom feel like, oh, there were winners and losers and all that stuff is definitely, definitely came out in our work as, you know, having kids think, oh, I'm not good at this, this isn't a space for me. No. I know we're running out of time. I want to be respectful, Meredith, of your time and our committee's time. Anybody on the committee have any last thoughts? And then Meredith, I'm going to ask you, do you have any last thoughts? Um, yeah, and I think it's super interesting hearing this from, from your perspective. I think you have a big challenge between, right, like with how siloed schools are. So that doesn't help you, but maybe affirm something you already knew a little bit more, right? I mean, it's definitely in that Tufts in the arts and sciences space, how kids, students now, you know, we have so many pre-meds and we have so many folks who are, you know, going to go to vet school or dental school, but I don't think they know about the other options. So that feels like a really interesting space that I want to think about in terms of that. And yeah, it feels like you have something super interesting to tap into on the ocean side, right? We, you know, Tufts is working a little bit on offshore wind and those kinds of spaces. And I don't, that ocean acoustics hasn't come up, right? Like I work with super civil engineering folks and, and there. So it feels like, it feels really exciting. So I'm excited to hear what you all come up with because I think I like topics like this, like cellular agriculture that don't look like race cars, rockets and robots. I mean, I love a good robot, but that, that give folks another entry into the space, right? Where they're like, but I don't want to code. I don't want to build anything. I don't want to compete. Then you're like, oh, you do this. And wow, like maybe it taps into your knowledge of sound or maybe it taps into your knowledge of the ocean or your passion. So we end up, we end up actually getting a lot of people from music because they, I bet that would be cool. A lot of people have a music background, even in ocean acoustics. So well, I did want to, I'm going to end up just saying that if something comes to mind tomorrow, tonight, that you're like, oh, I should have mentioned that or oh, I had this point I wanted to make, please send me an email, send anyone on the committee an email. And likewise, if you think about any specific brochures or any materials that you could share that could go into our archive for the public. And one of the things I always thought, I sort of look at forensics because it's so interdisciplinary across colleges and so forth. So I've been looking into that sort of type of how do, how do they have a TV show? They have a TV show. Yeah, ocean acoustics TV series. Right. Exactly. But if you think of any material that you think would be helpful for the committee to review, please let us know. And I just, we are right on time and I want to be respectful of everybody's time and thank you so much for making time for us. I know this is outside of the larger information gathering panel on higher ed, but I already took away a few nuggets that I will be championing within this report. So I very much appreciate the time you've spent with us. Thank you. It was fun. Best of luck with your work. And I will definitely send along anything else. Thank you so much.