A “Letter to the Editor” regarding Materials Education

To: Cordelia Sealy, [Author ID1: at Thu Apr 18 11:58:00 2002 ] Editor

Materials Today 


We were pleased to see the coverage of materials education (“Education Takes Center Stage”) in the November/December Materials Today. We would like to call your readers' attention to an international group which has been working for over ten years to improve instruction about materials at all curricular levels. It is ICME, the International Council on Materials Education, now with offices at The University of North Texas. https://ICME.unt.edu/

In addition to supporting and publicizing teaching materials and models, ICME publishes the Journal of Materials Education. This is a peer-reviewed professional journal, publishing scholarly articles, review papers, reviews of teaching resources, presentation of new software-based modules, discussions of curriculum development, and presentation and assessment of new approaches to the teaching process. It also includes reports of educational outreach in materials, in K-14 levels, and into the general community. Details on submission of articles or subscribing to JME may be found on the website above.

We would also mention that MRS, the Materials Research Society, has held a number of fruitful Symposia on Materials Education in recent years, with the next one coming up at the Fall, 2002 Meeting in Boston. With MRS agreement, JME has published the peer-reviewed Proceedings of these Symposia as Special Issues of the Journal. The Proceedings Issue for the Symposium held by MRS in Spring 2001 is soon to be published, followed by a Proceedings of the Education Symposium held last summer by MRS-Singapore. The widely circulated MRS Bulletin featured articles in its November, 2001 issue on aspects of materials education in Africa, Russia, and the U.S.

So, there is no dearth of interest and effort the world around, aimed at making students and their teachers conversant with the substance and outlook of contemporary materials science and engineering. We hope everyone involved will continue to share their ideas and enthusiasm. And we commend Materials Today for highlighting the critically important and exciting progress in Materials Education that is taking place today.

Theodore Davidson

Secretary, ICME

tdavidson@polymers-ppi.org