Soil Whisperer
Posted on November 28th, 2016 by Mary Lord
From the air or highway, America’s fruited plains present a uniform vista of vast abundance. Not to Amy Kaleita. The associate professor of agricultural and biosystems engineering at Iowa State University sees a “somewhat chaotic” array of micro-plots, each with unique hydrology, root depths, soil characteristics – all of them ripe opportunities for smart technology to enhance both sustainability and food production using “precision conservation.”
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Tags: Agricultural Engineering, Amy Kaleita, Environmental Engineering, farming, Iowa State University, micro, micro-plots, precision conservation, sensors
“Engineering and Animals” is the theme for the National Academy of Engineering’s 2017 EngineerGirl! Essay Contest. Students in grades 3 to 12 are asked to choose an endangered animal – like this black-footed ferret – and consider how engineering might improve life for that species. Submissions are due Feb. 1, 2017.
Rear Admiral Grace Murray Hopper was the first woman to earn a Ph.D. in mathematics from Yale, pioneered computer programming languages, discovered the first computer “bug,” and retired as the Navy’s highest ranking, longest-serving female officer in history. They even named a naval destroyer after her.
Want to inspire your students? Join millions in celebrating Computer Science Education Week – and computer pioneer Grace Hopper’s birthday – from December 5 to 11 this year by hosting an Hour of Code or other fun activity. 
At Carnegie Mellon University, students are learning to thwart cyber attacks by becoming “white hat hackers” – ethical computer sleuths searching for and fixing security gaps before the bad guys can exploit them.
The Department of Homeland Security designates October as National Cybersecurity Awareness Month. Its “Stop, Think, Connect” toolkit includes materials for various audiences, including students and educators, as well as guides to social media, phishing, and other topics.
To celebrate its 100th birthday and engage the next century’s environmentalists, the National Park Service is opening parks to 4th graders and their teachers and parents for free. Every Kid in a Park includes trip planning tools and teacher activity guides. No time or funds for field trips? Take a virtual tour of the Grand Canyon or explore resources for teaching history to citizen science.
Applications are now open for the Science and Engineering Apprenticeship Program (SEAP), a paid summer research program for high school students administered by the American Society for Engineering Education. Sophomores, juniors, and seniors are selected to spend eight weeks working alongside professional engineers and research scientists on real projects at one of 27 Department of Navy labs around the country. Apply by November 30, 2016.
What’s the best way to teach and inspire kids to think like engineers? How can schools ensure equity of access in engineering? The K-12 Engineering Education Podcast plans to cover these and a wide variety other topics in and effort to engage teachers, parents, entrepreneurs, and engineers in finding batter ways to educate and inspire kids in engineering thinking. Give it a listen!
