Applications for Summer 2022 Program for Teachers 

APPLY HERE until May 15, 2022 (Rolling admissions after this date)! Please email engineeringoutreach@columbia.edu with any questions. 

The NSF COSMOS-NewLAW Research Experience and Mentoring for Teachers (REM/RET) is an intense summer program for teachers who learn the basics of wireless technology and how to enhance the teaching material for their students using the predesigned online lessons/labs. The teachers are mentored by NYU and Columbia University researchers and by the teachers who participated in the program in the prior years. Since Fall 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.

The program runs from July 5 to July 22 and teachers will be paid $4,000 for their time during the summer plus school year classroom activities.

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. 

The teachers will learn about basic principles of wireless communications, including topics such as radio propagation and networking. This will be done using the web-based lessons/labs that were designed by 6-12 teachers who attended the program in prior years. The lessons are built to support NYC 6-12 curricula, on STEM subjects such as math, physics, biology, and other live sciences, computer science, communications,  and similar. The teachers will learn how to use the lessons/labs and how to support their own 6-12 students in running the online labs during the academic year. The instructional material for teachers consists of lesson plans, slides, videos, and running the online labs. The teachers will be mentored by graduate students from research laboratories at the universities and by teachers who attended the program in prior years who developed the 6-12 lessons.

  • 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 an NYC borough.
  • Must have at least three years of full-time teaching experience in science, math, or pre-engineering disciplines.
  • Must receive endorsement by the school administration.

Teacher Responsibilities:

  • 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
  • Completed application form
  • Two (2) reference letters from your school administration, submitted here
  • Current resume (submitted via email)
  • Completed essay questions
  • 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.