- Posted on Thursday, May 4th, 2006 at 10:17 am
Profile: Lori Wingerter
Lori Wingerter
How does someone with an industrial hygiene degree wind up in the education field? Ask Lori Wingerter. She’s the manager of K-12 Education for the GM Foundation. She started out in Fashion Merchandising at Oakland University and then, because she liked math and science, switched to a technical field.
Lori’s worked at GM for 21 years, making her way from an intern at the GM Research Laboratories through Environmental Activities Staff to overseeing GM’s many education initiatives. Like a lot of moms, Lori works flexible hours, and has for the last 14 years. Her life is filled up with work, her husband (who has his own business), her three children who range in ages from 5 to 14, and various community volunteer activities.
Lori has a “great job,” she says. She and her colleagues want to reach kids, teachers, parents, companies and organizations to widen interest in math and science. They hope to get kids to turn to careers in engineering and science – because GM’s going to need them in the future. Lori’s group shares GM’s engineering expertise in as many ways as possible – by sending GM people out to schools in local communities, by creating three web sites for children of all ages to explore, and by developing curricula that can be used by all sorts of groups.
There are different sections of the GM Education web site, each aimed at a different age group. The grades K-4 section has lots of pictures, games and activities aimed at early readers. In the grades 5-8 section, students can look inside an internal combustion engine, learn about ethanol (and race stalk cars), and see how GM develops concept cars. Education 9-12 has sections on the environment, technology, fuel cells & energy and making vehicles. There’s also a place for high school students to learn about careers at GM. All three sites also have links for homework help.
Lori is extremely proud of the curricula and lesson plans her group has developed. Back in 2002, when no educators were talking about fuel cells,GM saw the need for a teaching module that made the subject easy to understand. So Lori and her team worked with Weekly Reader to develop materials for middle schoolers. The surprise has been that not only is this curriculum used in middle schools around the country, but also by businesses and other organizations.
Here are the curricula/lessons plans available for teachers – or anyone – to download and use. Some of these teaching tools are available in Spanish.
- Hydrogen: Tomorrow’s Energy Source (grades 5-8)
- Fuel Cells: Driving the Future ( 5-8)
- Ethanol: No Fossils in This Fuel(5-8)
- Technology: Inventing the Future (1-4)
- SPACE: A Journey to Our Future (2-5)
- Count on Science & Math for Your Future (1-5)
- The Earth Day Way: Every Day (K-4)
- Fuel Cells: Powering Our Economic Future (5-8)
In the fall, GM will offer a new curriculum on E85 ethanol. We’ll check back with Lori’s group occasionally to meet some of the other education folks and look at the many other programs they’ve got going.
5 Comments
Paul
Where is the discussion regarding the envrionmental impact of massive corn farming, or the fact that most ethanol is made using electricity from coal, making it not carbon-neutral. Or that the nuclear industry is behind they hydrogen economy because they stand to gain huge subsidies for building hydrogen production plants? Or that energy efficiency is the cheapest way to make more energy available? Or that individual vehicles are much less efficient than walkable communities and effective public transit?
I admire GM’s desire to educate kids regarding alternative energy, but to present the benefits without the downsides is disingenuous.
And carbon dioxide “may” contribute to global warming? Scientific consensus has been reached: Carbon dioxide emissions from people are contributing to global warming. This is akin to saying evaporation “may” cause rainfall.
Gil
Oh, lighten up, Paul! I think it’s great that GM is reaching out to students. Heck, if they want to investigate this stuff on their own, they’re given external resources (did you even read the articles?) so they can check out other voices on these topics.
Of *course* GM is going to take the safe route and say “may” in most of these cases. Remember, GM Legal is still out there. =P Also, by stating “may,” it encourages students to go looking… maybe they’ll find a more definitive answer and send it off to Ms. Wingerter.
She’s doing a great job.
Paul
I’ll lighten up when people stop denying that our current course of action will put New York, Venice, Amsterdam, Copenhagen, and most of Florida underwater in fifty years.
GM: You focus on making vehicles. And we’ll focus on raising our kids, m’kay?
xyb
My kids really enjoy the games on the site. One of their teachers is adding the “History of GM Design” series as part of her lesson on Michigan history.
After reading about the FIRST Robotics league on the web site, I’ll be starting a junior league team (Lego Mindstorms) for our elementary school.
Despite the debate-able-ness of the arguments back and forth about which energy solution is the alternative, I think this is a fantastic way to get kids thinking outside the box. Who knows? They’ll probably think of something way better than the options we have now. But they wouldn’t even be thinking about it if we weren’t talking about it.
Gil and Paul, you two keep arguing. Focus on the facts and data. While they work the math proofs with your data, they’ll be learning something. I’m trusting these kids to use their brilliant minds.
By the way, I think the post on the hybrid bus has quite a few math activities… we just need to know how much one of those buses costs, along the miles driven each year, to complete a worksheet! =]
Gil
Paul, you make no sense. You say, “GM: You focus on making vehicles.”
Isn’t that what has put us on our “current course of action” that’s going to flood all these major cities?
At least GM is engaging in the conversation. Can you forgive the corporation if it turns out to be wrong?
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