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CORVALLIS, Ore. - A national team of university faculty including a professor from the Oregon State University College of Business has won a $3-million National Science Foundation grant to further develop a pioneering online instructional resource that fosters engineering education.

"TeachEngineering" makes math, science and engineering curricula available online to K-12 teachers, according to Rene Reitsma, an associate professor in the OSU College of Business Information Management Group, which is helping to expand the digital resource.

"This is not merely a Web site," said Reitsma, who helped develop TeachEngineering. "It's a digital library that's entirely searchable. Teachers can find curricular materials by topic or keyword, grade level, educational standards, or a combination of these factors." Educators at all levels appreciate that kind of flexibility, he said.

TeachEngineering's new funding, spread over four years, comes through NSF's National Science Digital Library (NSDL) program. The College of Business will receive $268,767 of the grant to design, develop and provide further infrastructure for the project.

"TeachEngineering" ensures that the materials meet K-12 educational standards, a critical issue with which school districts nationwide and curriculum providers alike are grappling, Reitsma said.

The grant will enable "TeachEngineering" to merge with the University of California's National Engineering Education Delivery System (NEEDS) digital library, expanding educational coverage beyond the K-12 level by adding undergraduate engineering curricula. When this phase of development is complete, the project will align all curricula with K-12 standards in all states as well as those of the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET) for undergraduate education.

The grant also will allow the digital curricula collection to grow substantially in size, making it even more valuable and attractive to classroom teachers and college and university faculty, Reitsma said.

Faculty at a consortium of seven universities received a portion of the NSF grant. The other six institutions are the University of Colorado, Colorado School of Mines, Duke University, Virginia Tech, University of California, Berkeley and Worcester Polytechnic Institute.

OSU's role remains to provide the infrastructure and technical support for "TeachEngineering" and to technically guide its merger with Berkeley's NEEDS collection. In partnership with OSU's Open Source Lab, the College of Business maintains and hosts the "TeachEngineering" collection.

"Our vision is that the 'NEEDS/TeachingEngineering' project becomes the 'engineering wing' of the National Science Digital Library," Reitsma said.

The long-term plan is for the new project to become an independent, non-profit entity, Reitsma said. Curriculum would continue to be available at no charge to educators. Fees from for-profit publishers of teaching materials and charges for hosting curriculum developed elsewhere as well as grants would fund this nonprofit organization in the future.

An MBA team from the OSU College of Business under the direction of Professor Tom Dowling wrote the business plan that supported the consortium's proposal for new funding from the NSF. Reviewers reported that as a result, the proposal exhibited one of the better long-term business and feasibility plans.

At a time when the United States must compete globally in technical fields, the NSF is making a significant investment in ensuring engineering support for the future while supporting math, science and technology teaching across the full spectrum of educational levels, Reitsma said. Developing "TeachEngineering" is a big step in that direction, he said.