On Wednesday, June 9, 2010 the Engineering and Design and Development students within the Engineering Academy at North Penn High School offered an engaging and exciting presentation about their nanotechnology research projects to an audience of parents, peers, educators, and underclassmen. The students' research topics included hydrophobic nanofibers, polymer tensile strength, sound detection and energy storage, nanofiber air filters, shear thickening fluid, and much more. The first half of the students' presentations introduced the audience to the broad concepts  of nanotechnology and electrospinning as well as a summary of the eleven research teams' findings. The second half of the presentation allowed the students to present their research posters and live demonstrations of their particular research projects. "The students' final presentation offered them a key opportunity to do what all researchers do... share their research," says the students’ Nanotechnology teacher, Michael Boyer.

Engineering Design and Development, or EDD, is the capstone course of a national pre-engineering program called Project Lead the Way. In this course, students work together to research, design, and construct solutions to engineering problems.  North Penn’s EDD course has modified this approach by introducing their students to pure and applied nanotechnology research utilizing a polymer nanofiber production process known as electrospinning as its primary focus.

The study of nanotechnology is a true convergence of disciplines; science, technology, engineering and math (STEM).  This year, there were 26 seniors in two Engineering Design and Development (EDD) courses in North Penn High School’s Engineering Academy. Global competition and the rapid advance of new and emerging technologies make it imperative that students are prepared now more than ever to succeed in today's world. The Future is N.E.A.R program at North Penn High School's Engineering Academy offers students an opportunity to gain 21st century skills that will help them be prepared to lead the most cutting edge research in the ever growing field of nanotechnology. 

The Future is N.E.A.R. program represents the most promising of several advanced STEM programs across the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania in its incorporation of the many of the key elements of the Pennsylvania Department of Education's Standards Aligned System (SAS) ensuring student achievement. While this unique program incorporates many of not all of the six SAS standards, aligned instruction is perhaps the most evident as students are challenged to conduct and present real cutting edge technology research in an engaging framework that fosters inquiry and learning. Students routinely comment that they wish there was more time for conducting their experiments. Underclassmen students who will be participating in the project next year were invited to attend this year's graduating students' presentations have already begun brainstorming ideas for their own research projects and want to begin working on their topics over the summer months so that they can begin the research portion of the course earlier in the school year. "The Future is NEAR (Nanotechnology Education And Research) program is designed to give students the opportunity to experience learning in a new way where they design their own experiments, construct their own knowledge from their team's designed experiments and learn that failure is a positive part of the learning process," adds Boyer.

Boyer has big plans for the program’s future. He hopes to purchase a Scanning Electron Microscope for the students through potential grant funding opportunities already in the works and he also plans to incorporate international research experiments via high-speed videoconferencing in the near future. His ultimate dream would be to someday to create an R&D invention lab based on the students’ research and collective brainpower of which there appears to be no shortage coming out of this exciting STEM program.

For more information about the Future is N.E.A.R. program please see the website at http://www.thefutureisnear.org/. To view a video of the students' final research presentation, go to: http://www.thefutureisnear.org/presentation/2010/.