Get Full Government Meeting Transcripts, Videos, & Alerts Forever!
Get email alerts on the Education topic
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.
UTEP and El Paso outline 'El Paso Computes' ARPA program to train teachers and reach 20,000 students
Summary
University of Texas at El Paso College of Education briefed council on 'El Paso Computes,' an ARPA-funded partnership with the city to build computational thinking and AI skills across K–12, training nearly 300 teachers so far and setting a goal to reach 20,000 underserved students.
University of Texas at El Paso officials on Tuesday updated the City Council on 'El Paso Computes,' an American Rescue Plan Act–funded initiative to expand computational thinking and artificial-intelligence education across El Paso schools.
Dr. Clifton Tanabe, dean of UTEP’s College of Education, said the initiative’s “big goal” is to impact 20,000 underserved K–12 students through a scaffolded set of workshops, teacher-training sessions and student experiences. The program is delivered through partnerships with local districts, El Paso Community College and regional organizations.
UTEP staff described a hands-on, scaffolded approach: introductory workshops for general K–12 teachers, advanced workshops for current computer-science teachers, and secondary experiences such as cybersecurity boot camps for high-school students. Presenters said early results show increases in teachers’ CS and AI content knowledge and greater willingness to teach those topics in class; the backup materials note nearly 300 teachers have participated and roughly 105 secondary students have attended cybersecurity camps so far.
The presenters emphasized teacher capacity-building as central to sustainability: the College of Education trains a substantial share of local teachers, and the redesigned teacher-preparation curriculum now integrates computational thinking across disciplines. Dr. Tanabe and his colleagues said an evaluation team is tracking knowledge, skills and attitude changes through retrospective pre/post surveys.
Council members asked about departmental housing of the program (it runs through the College of Education), how academic departments are engaged, and how the training addresses AI risks and academic integrity. Presenters said those topics are built into workshops and that the project aims to model safe and effective classroom uses of AI.
The briefing was informational; no council vote was required.
