RISES (Re-energize and Invigorate Student Engagement through Science) is a coordinated suite of resources including 42 interactive English and Spanish STEM videos produced by Children's Museum Houston in coordination with the science curriculum department at Houston ISD. The videos are aligned to the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills standards, and each come with a bilingual Activity Guide and Parent Prompt sheet, which includes guiding questions and other extension activities.
Researchers at Arizona State University (ASU), in partnership with the Smithsonian Museum on Main Street (MoMS), the Arizona Science Center, and eight tribal and rural museum sites around Arizona, will help educate and empower communities living in the Desert Southwest on water sustainability issues through the creation of WaterSIMmersion, a mixed reality (MR) educational game and accompanying museum exhibit.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Claire LauerScotty CraigMina Johnson-GlenbergMichelle Hale
This project builds on an NSF-funded program which engaged youth in the creation of art-science experiences that use the biology and the experiences of migratory birds as a means for communicating the impact of a changing climate.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Rebecca SafranShawhin RoudbariMary Osnes
This project aims to (1) advance understanding of sociotechnical ecosystems involving AI to support diasporic urban farming; (2) collaboratively develop AI-based technologies that better integrates and sustains technological gains with diasporic knowledge, and (3) systematically assess the impact of AI-based farming technologies on diasporic communities and industrial partners.
Oregon State University (OSU) will facilitate a Polar STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Mathematics) program that aims to increase the impact and visibility of polar science by integrating arts- and education-based elements into the polar science research setting.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Julie RisienKim BernardSusan Roberta RowePeter Betjemann
This project centers on an Indigenous Scholars program, immersing students in land-based learning to deepen a relationship with their homeland while understanding how legal and political conflicts impact environmental and community health. Students will explore ways of knowing in language, mathematics, science, arts, and society and culture, through sessions led by scholars versed in Indigenous methodologies.
The Louisiana Children’s Museum is developing a comprehensive set of resources entitled “Water Dialogues–Living with Water,” designed around its new exhibits and landscape resources, to strengthen the community’s understanding of the challenges associated with water management. They are creating a new field trip series and water-based science curriculum, “Water Pathways” as well as an outreach program, “Steward’s Ship,” to bring the program’s environmental messages to schools and camps. The museum will also conduct a professional development training series on science education for local educators implementing the state’s new science standards, in addition to a series of literacy workshops where children ages four to eight will write “how-to” books and “water journals.” To further spread the associated environmental and sustainability messages, they will organize an annual “Water Fest” program for the community.
The Rochester Museum and Science Center and partners will plan, design, fabricate, and evaluate its new Water Worlds exhibition using a hybrid exhibition model that integrates hands-on science and interactive technology with authentic collections objects in immersive environments. Reimagining the gallery in this way will allow the museum’s professional staff to work with outside experts in the sciences—including environmental science, sustainability, water resources, and climate—to create a unified watershed-themed narrative for the gallery. Hands-on, inquiry-focused exhibits will inspire visitors to explore the Lake Ontario watershed and analyze critical local issues including water pollution, flooding, invasive species, and the impact of a changing climate on local waterways, as well as innovative solutions to these challenges.
The Hollister Herbarium at Tennessee Tech University will implement “Rooting Students in their Botanical History” — an educational module targeted for 11th and 12th grade biology students. The module will address “plant blindness,” a phenomenon defined as the failure to notice or appreciate plants. The herbarium will collaborate with three Tennessee high school biology teachers, a videographer, and a graduate research assistant to increase knowledge, awareness, and appreciation of plants over the three-year project. Students also will get to know herbarium specimens as an essential resource for information about the natural world.
The Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden will conduct the Million Orchid Project Authentic STEM Initiative to provide inclusive and accessible STEM learning opportunities for approximately 1,800 students annually from the most diverse and under-resourced middle and K-8 schools in Miami–Dade County. The initiative will use the Fairchild's STEMLab — a mobile plant propagation lab designed especially for schoolchildren — to bring the museum’s specialized scientific research to young learners in South Florida neighborhoods. Students and teachers will collect and analyze scientific data, devise research questions, and test hypotheses that will advance local conservation and contribute to the propagation of endangered orchids. Students will have the opportunity to explore STEM careers through interactions with Fairchild botanists.
The Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum will partner with the Flowing Wells Unified School District on “We Bee Scientists,” a program to engage students in grades K–6 in real-world science by learning about bees—the most important group of pollinators. They plan to create a curriculum and related activities aligned with the Arizona science standards. The program is an expansion of the Tucson Bee Collaborative, which empowers community scientists from “K to grey” to contribute to ecosystem health and understanding through the study of native bees. The museum also will partner with Pima Community College and the University of Arizona on the program, which will involve volunteers and high school, college, and university students in documenting the abundance and diversity of native bees.
Many urgent environmental challenges, from soil degradation and water pollution to global climate change, have deep roots in how complex systems impact human well-being, and how humans relate to nature and to each other. Learning In and From the Environment through Multiple Ways of Knowing (LIFEways) is based on the premise that Indigenous stewardship has sustained communities on these lands since time immemorial. This project is collaboratively led by the Indigenous Education Institute and Oregon State University’s STEM Research Center, in partnership with Native Pathways and the Reimagine Research Group, Swinomish Indian Tribal Community, Oregon Museum of Science and Industry, World Forestry Center, and a national park network in the Pacific Northwest. The aim of this partnership is to deepen the informal learning field’s understanding of how Indigenous ways of knowing are currently or can be included in outdoor learning environments such as parks, nature preserves, and tribal lands. The project will share practices that center Indigenous worldviews to build awareness of their value and enhance STEM learning in outdoor settings. These approaches engage Native community members in continuing their traditional knowledge and practices, and help non-Native audiences learn from the dynamic interrelationships of the environment in authentic, respectful ways.
Conventional outdoor education is mostly grounded in Western concepts of “conservation” and “preservation” that position humans as acting separately from nature. This Research in Service to Practice project will identify “wise practices” that honor Indigenous ways of knowing, and investigate current capacities, barriers and opportunities for amplifying Indigenous voices in outdoor education. A team of Native and non-Native researchers and practitioners will draw upon Indigenous and Western research paradigms. Methods include Talk Story dialogues, a landscape study using national surveys, case studies, and a Circle of Relations to interpret and disseminate research findings. LIFEways will also document partnership processes to continue to build on the Collaboration with Integrity framework between tribal and non-tribal organizations (Maryboy and Begay, 2012). Findings from the LIFEways project will be shared broadly through a series of webinars, local and national meetings, conferences, and publications.