The Division of Materials Research of the National Science Foundation has directed college faculties to promote materials science via outreach activities. Although college faculties usually are not trained to teach K–12 students, they certainly have the experience to connect a material’s property to the concepts students are learning in the classroom. Without the “push” from NSF, it is unlikely that college faculties would engage in such an enterprise. On the other hand, this can be a very rewarding activity for inspiring the future materials engineers of our country and for the professor, who will have an unparalleled educational experience.

Bringing the “materials perspective” to K–12 students requires effort, including preparation, scheduling, teacher training, solving logistical issues, and, finally, conducting the activity. With support from the Ceramics Program in NSF DMR, we recently systematically faced these challenges and learned that most of them are onetime problems—once they are solved, subsequent activities are straightforward. However, simple questions, such as how to select a school and how to interest teachers, can be big obstacles. Other problems, such as how to bring experiments to the classroom or how to train K–12 teachers, also can be critical impediments to a successful outreach program.