NSF GK-12 Urban Educators Program

Abstract

The IUPUI NSF GK-12 Urban Educators program partners STEM graduate students with the K-12 community to bring science into the classroom. Our main goal and conceptual focus is to create an urban partnership between STEM graduate fellows, IPS STEM teachers, and IUPUI School of Science and IU School of Medicine faculty that centers on early exposure to field and laboratory research in biomedical and environmental science education, appropriate for grades 6-12. The largest activity of this project involves GK-12 Fellows working with STEM teachers to bring inquiry-based research projects, linked to classroom needs, and the Indiana Academic Standards, into classrooms. Fellows work under two multidisciplinary research themes: Medicine and Human Health and Discovering the Science of the Environment (DSE). The activities developed provide middle school and high school students with opportunities to learn science by engaging in on-going experimentation and fieldwork. This poster will present a series of posters from specific Fellow-Teacher teams, highlighting their accomplishments in bringing graduate level research into the K-12 classroom. Both Fellows and Teachers will be presenting their work and available to share their experiences and lessons learned.