As part of the BEAT grant, in summer of 2008 Georgia Tech offered two one-week summer programs for high school students with a priority placed on recruiting women and minority students. 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. These “BEAT the Traffic” camps introduced students to the field of transportation engineering, while honing and developing skills to prepare them for success in science and engineering.
The curriculum was designed to be highly interactive and flexible so that it could be adapted to students at various grade levels, while retaining its fundamental goals and objectives. This website provides an overview of the “Beat the Traffic” summer camp as well as resources (lesson plans, code, etc.) to aid in implementing the camp. Interested readers are encouraged to contact any of the project leaders (listed above) for additional information.