This was forwarded through the Naperville Home Educators Yahoo group.
Looks like a great opportunity to give some input and hear about brand new opportunities for homeschoolers in a partnership with IIT.
at the Rice Campus
201 East Loop Road
Wheaton, Illinois 60189
October 2, 2012
Dear Home School aficionado:
We at the Illinois Institute of Technology, Rice Campus in Wheaton, would like to work with you and your students in their secondary education.
For everyone’s best quality of life, the staff at IIT realize that all citizens, both young and old, need to respect and appreciate the intricate and complex web of life on Earth, and understand its dependence on the abiotic factors that provide the edifice for our planet. In the words of the African environmentalist Baba Dioum “In the end, we will only conserve what we love; we will only love what we understand; and we will only understand what we are taught.” At IIT, our mission is education—and an important topic within that endeavor is living sustainably, within the means of the earth, as we go about our daily lives.
We are trying to increase our own sustainability efforts on campus, and are including outreach into the community as part of those efforts. Thus, our staff would like to work with you and your students as we feel we can offer expertise in the teaching of environmental science—an appropriate theme for integrating the various disciplines of science with technology, mathematics, the humanities and the social sciences. We have ideas for several different problem/project based learning offerings and would like to engage in discussion regarding how we can help you, with our facility and staff, in the education of your children.
To accommodate different schedules we will hold two meetings at the IIT Rice Campus: Wednesday, November 7th at 6:30PM, and Saturday, November 10th at 10:00AM. We anticipate that the meetings will last 1.5 to 2 hours. At the gatherings we will ask for your input as to how we can help you in the education of your children within the themes of sustainability and science, while using the Rice Campus facility as our “Petri dish.” We are open to your ideas and desire to gauge your interest in this collaboration. We plan to outline some of our project ideas in the dialogue.
Please respond to me regarding your interest in this collaboration, as well as your availability for either one of these meetings at camasus@hawk.iit.edu. Questions are also welcomed via email. Feel free to forward this letter to friends and colleagues whom you think might be interested in this project.
Hoping we can work together for our youth and their education,
Susan Camasta, PhD
Department of Mathematics and Science Education
School of Applied Technology
Illinois Institute of Technology
Chicago & Wheaton, IL
