KU to launch summer camps to educate high school students on aerospace engineering, artificial intelligence, computer science

LAWRENCE — The University of Kansas has received federal funding to host a series of summer camps that will offer high school students short preparatory courses in aerospace engineering, artificial intelligence and computer science. The project is part of a partnership with Kansas State University to prepare the next generation of Kansans for careers in those fields.

“We want to motivate students,” said Shawn Keshmiri, professor of aerospace engineering, who is leading KU’s participation in the partnership.

The overall effort is called Project LEAPES, short for Learning, Exploration and Application for Prospective Engineering Students. KU’s Center for Remote Sensing of Ice Sheets teamed up with the Rural Education Center at Kansas State University to apply for a shared $2.6 million grant from the National Defense Education Program — one of 13 proposed projects to get funding (less than 3.5% funding rate), according to Keshmiri. KU’s share of the grant is $945,000. The project is intended to provide summer programming for nearly 3,000 students and 360 teachers over three years, as well as other programming for students and professional learning sessions for teachers during the school year.

Project LEAPES is aimed at recruiting and retaining students in science, technology, engineering and math at both universities. But it is also designed to shore up the workforce for Kansas companies that employ more than 45,000 workers in those fields. And that work should help the United States as it competes with other countries.

“There is a new move toward basic investment in science and engineering, to maintain U.S. technological superiority and national security,” Keshmiri said. “China is one competitor, but Europe and Russia are spending huge amounts of money on artificial intelligence and machine learning.”

Education in those subjects must start early, Keshmiri said.

“The importance of it is if you do not start from a high school level, if you do not start from very early on, people are not motivated to join,” Keshmiri said. “You want to have a workforce that can be trained well enough to be good in competition.”

Under the grant, KU will host at least seven two-week courses each summer for rising junior and senior high school students to get ready for careers in science and engineering while they assemble drones, build remote control cars and practice their coding skills. High school teachers will be offered four one-week courses to prepare them to teach some of those skills in their home schools. Additionally, KU will offer opportunities for students to shadow STEM researchers at KU during the academic year.

“Students will be learning not only the basics of mathematics of AI and machine learning — the basics of the computer programming side of it, the hands-on experience of writing codes — but they’ll get to see the results,” Keshmiri said.

Before they get to KU for the prep courses, younger students will have the opportunity to participate in science and technology programming from K-State. Seventh and eighth graders will be offered virtual camps to raise their STEM awareness, while high school freshmen and sophomores can take advantage of an “exploration” to learn more about the tech industry.

“We already had the benefit of collaborating with a very good team from K-State-the Rural Education Center,” Keshmiri said.

The KU/CReSIS and K-State teams had previously cooperated to obtain a National Science Foundation grant in the applications of unmanned aerial systems in geology and remote sensing (SOARING: Sharing Opportunities, Approaches, and Resources in New Geo-teaching).

Since 2018, the KU Department of Aerospace Engineering has received three research grants from federal agencies — two from NASA and one from the U.S. Air Force — to develop artificial intelligence controllers for unmanned autonomous aircraft.

“We had the credentials in AI,” Keshmiri said. “I think that’s why we were chosen to handle this.”

He said the hands-on nature of Project LEAPES’ offerings should get Kansas students excited for careers in technology.

“When you hear it as a science fiction movie, it may or may not click with you,” Keshmiri said. “When you see it firsthand, it will make you very interested.”