Research Experience for Teachers: COSMOS

Summer 2023 Applications are now available - Apply Now!

The NSF COSMOS-NewLAW Research Experience for Teachers (RET) is an intense summer program for teachers who learn how to master the most advanced techniques in wireless technology with help from researchers at Columbia University and NYU. The teachers work at the MetroTech Center Campus at NYU, designing web-based lab experiments that illustrate the theory and practice of wireless networking. Since Fall of 2018, participating teachers have incorporated the science, math, and computer science lab experiments developed through this program within their classrooms, giving students hands-on experience with the next wave of mobile technology.

COSMOS: Learning from the Next Generation Wireless Network (Video published April, 2019; featuring 2018 RET Program Teacher Cohort)

Over the period of 3 summer weeks, the teachers will:

1. Get training in the fundamentals of wireless communications.

2. Learn about experiential COSMOS web-based lessons/labs created for teaching 6-12 students about STEM topics from the NYC STEM curriculum.
3. Learn how to use the lessons/labs in their 6-12 classrooms.

4. Get research and mentoring experience by interacting with the COSMOS research team and with other 6-12 teachers participating in the program

Summer activities are followed up by teachers using the lessons/labs in their 6-12 classrooms during the following academic year. 

This project is a partnership with Columbia Engineering Outreach and NYU Tandon's Center for K12 STEM Education.

• Teachers MUST be math or science certified.
• Teachers must be U.S. citizens or Permanent Residents.
• Must teach at a public middle or high school located in a NYC borough.
• Must have at least three years of full-time teaching experience in science, math, or pre-engineering disciplines.
• Must receive endorsement by school administration.

Teachers must also be responsible for the following:

• Attend all program activities
• Complete assigned research and curriculum project, final presentation and report
• Participate in academic year activities, such as presentations, meetings, and conferences
• Implement a COSMOS lesson within classroom with students during academic year
• Submit program assessment

• Dates: July 10 - July 28, 2023
• Location: NYU Tandon School of Engineering
• Schedule: 9am - 5pm
• Stipend Amount: $4,000 (total for 3 weeks of summer work plus school year classroom activities)
• Additional: Teachers will work with cloud-deployed labs, and can get CTLE credit.
• Applications Due: May 26, 2023 - Rolling basis after this date

• Completed application form
• Submit one (1) reference letter from school administration
• Current resume (submitted via email)
• Completed essay questions

Additional Information:

• COSMOS Educational Toolkit - A great resource for free lessons, labs, and curriculum materials for math, science, and computer science classrooms — created from previous years' COSMOS RET cohorts. 
• COSMOS: A New Generation of Wireless Technologies - A video introduction to the research on wireless technologies. 
• COSMOS Testbed Main Website - Main website for the COSMOS project. The COSMOS project is aimed at design, development, and deployment of a city-scale advanced wireless testbed in order to support real-world experimentation on next-generation wireless technologies and applications.

How will you be involved? 

Teachers will work together with their mentor and graduate students jointly to design and develop web-based labs/experiments that will run on the advanced wireless testbed currently being designed. The teacher will use the testbed to develop research experiments suitable for K-12 students, which will be transferred into web-based, self-explanatory labs to be used by other technology students. The labs should be an approachable introduction to interesting and emerging concepts related to optical and wireless networking, without demanding mastery of the hardware’s complexity. The labs will provide students the opportunity to understand a real networking system’s dynamics and operation. 

Classroom Implementation:

With mentor support, the teachers will create new curriculum labs with the goal to use the labs in their classrooms in the following academic year. The labs will be web-based and will be disseminated though the website of the of the COSMOS RET Toolkit. The mentor will be involved in the teacher’s classroom through class visits and through meetings with the teacher as needed. The teacher will be encouraged and supported to present the labs he/she develop at regional or national meetings, or publish in an education/practitioner journal. We anticipate and hope the teacher and research team partnerships will continue for many years to come.

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