Building engineering achievement through transportation (BEAT): A Traffic engineering program for high school students

Abstract

The BEAT the Traffic program was a week-long summer program conducted at Georgia Tech with support by the Federal Highway Administration. This highly interactive and flexible program introduced high school students to transportation engineering and helped them develop and prepare for success in science and engineering. The curriculum included, among other things, an overview of the transportation sector and fundamentals of developing appropriate signalized timing plans for signalized intersections. The curriculum culminated with a design challenge in which teams of students attempted to design the best signal timing plan for a series of two intersections. This paper will give details about the curriculum, evaluation results, and lessons learned about high school outreach. © American Society for Engineering Education, 2010.