Submerge, Learn, Succeed: Enhancing K-12 STEM Education Through Experiential Pedagogy in Naval Engineering

This innovative practices paper presents a novel means of integrating naval engineering into K-12 pedagogy. Submarines are central to the U.S. Navy's deterrence strategy. The submarine industrial base (SIB) is facing a dramatic increase in procurement expectations over the following decade; as such, the two regional flagship universities around the largest submarine producer, the University of Connecticut (UConn) and the University of Rhode Island (URI), founded the UConn-URI Navy STEM Coalition to build a comprehensive pipeline to attempt radical new means of integrating technologies crucial to submarine production into K-12 pedagogies. Goals include getting students more interested in learning science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) topics and more willing to consider careers in naval engineering. Our most innovative pedagogical shift has been integrating these technology lessons through four discrete summer programs for teachers at various points in their careers to embed them in the language and culture of cutting edge naval research taking place at research universities and provide resources for their own STEM modules.