The Arkansas Center for Mathematics and Science Education (ACMSE) is now the UCA Institute for STEM Professional Development and Education Research (UCA STEM Institute). The name change reflects the Institute’s renewed commitment to educational research and the services it provides.
According to the Arkansas STEM Coalition, during the next decade the demand for scientists and engineers in the United States is expected to increase at least four times the rate for all other occupations. But in general, today’s high school students are not performing well in mathematics and sciences and even fewer are pursuing degrees in technical fields.
As part of the state’s effort to address this issue, the Institute is playing a vital role in building a program to support the UCA’s mission on teacher education and working closely with the new UCA STEM Residential College on various outreach and service
learning activities to motivate teachers and students to take an interest in STEM programs. The Institute has been expanding its offerings to include technology training to pre-service teachers, in service teachers, and K-12 students.
Since 2008, the Institute has had significant impact in education and educators:
• Grant funds of about $925,530 have been received.
• More than 50 professional development programs for the K-12 teachers and students have been offered.
• About 600 teachers and 300 students have been through grant programs and special projects.
• Involved 31 UCA faculty members in various teacher training projects.
• Strong collaborations with several Educational Cooperatives and more than 15 school districts have been fostered.
• Collaborative work with College of Education and College of Natural Sciences and Mathematics has been established.
Dr. Yu Sun, associate professor in the Department of Computer Science, and Jin Yang, a Ph.D. student at the University of Electronic Science and Engineering Technology of China, published a peer-reviewed paper at the IEEE Global Communications Conference (Globecom 2010), a premier conference in Telecommunications in the world. The acceptance rate of this conference is 35.6%. In this research, the team developed a new rate control algorithm for the emerging H.264 Scalable Video Coding standard. The proposed algorithm can accurately regulate the compression bit rates for miscellaneous networked video applications with diverse needs in resolution, video quality and frame rate.
Dr. Debra Burris, assistant professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy, is working toward completing her training to become a certified Arkansas Master Naturalist. To achieve certification she must complete 40 hours of initial training plus an additional 8 hours per year of advanced training and 40 hours of volunteerism through the program.
Team UCA Ursus Places Third in Microsoft Imagine Cup
An automated system designed by two UCA students that allows people to self monitor their diagnosed skin cancer using cell phones placed third in software design in the U.S. finals of the Microsoft Imagine Cup 2011.
The Imagine Cup is the world’s premier student technology competition sponsored and hosted by Microsoft. This year, 74,000 students from 400 different schools participated in the competition. The top 10 teams competed in the finals held April 9-11 in Redmond, Washington.
Team UCA Ursus — sophomore Brendan Lee of Alma and Muhyeddin Ercan, an international graduate student from Turkey — competed against students from Harvard, Drexel University, University of Pennsylvania, Central Connecticut State University, Wayne State University, University of Michigan, Arizona State University, Brigham Young University, University of California-Los Angeles and University of Arkansas-Little Rock. Lee and Ercan received a $3,000 prize for their third place finish.
The teams competing in the Imagine Cup created real-world software applications using Microsoft technologies. The software applications addressed this year’s theme: Imagine a world where technology helps solve the toughest problems.
UCA Selected as Computer Science NSF Research Experiences Undergraduate Site
The National Science Foundation has selected the University of Central Arkansas to become the first Computer Science NSF Research Experiences for Undergraduate Students (REU) site in Arkansas.
UCA is one of the seven newly selected REU sites across the nation. Currently, there are about 60 sites sponsored by the Computer & Information Science & Engineering (CISE) Directory of NSF. The primary objective of the REU program is to encourage talented undergraduate students to pursue graduate study and research careers in computer science by providing them a competitive research experience.
UCA’s Computer Science Department will receive a $324,977 grant over a three-year period for the program. The project will be lead by Dr. Vamsi Paruchuri and Dr. Yu Sun, both faculty of UCA’s Computer Science Department.
The REU site at UCA is titled Applied Research in Health Information Technology. The program will attract ten talented undergraduates nationwide to UCA to gain nine week-long competitive research experiences during the summer. Each of these students will receive a $4,500 stipend in addition to about $2,000 for travel and accommodation for participation.
Seven faculty members at UCA will work with the students on carefully designed research projects range from medical image processing to health informatics and secure and privacy preserving electronic health records transmission. The interdisciplinary nature of this REU program offers students the right opportunities to perceive the importance and applications of computer science and continue their education in this field. The research environment will offer the participants the opportunity to interact with computer scientists, medical physicists, and industry personnel.