This ITEST-Alabama (Developing and Testing Innovations: DTI) project aims to advance efforts to better understand and promote practices that increase minority high school students' motivations and capacities to pursue STEM careers. This project engages students in hands-on field experience, laboratory/project-based entrepreneurship tasks and mentorship experiences in fields of computing, specifically in cybersecurity.

Project Overview: This two-year research-design project, undertaken in collaboration with GBH and Molly of Denali is: (1) building new knowledge about the ways in which children from rural Alaska Native communities, ages 6- 8, develop “environmental identity” (defined as the empathy, knowledge, and skills that children need to act responsibly for the environment) and (2) investigating how environmental identity can be nurtured via an intergenerational, community-based environmental science program that is supported by appropriate technologies and

Media producers from GBH and researchers from South Dakota State University and the University of Alaska Southeast have recently launched a new research and development project that is designed to: (1) build new knowledge about the ways in which children from rural Alaska Native communities, ages 6-8, develop “environmental identity”—the empathy, knowledge, and skills that children need to act responsibly for the environment (Green, Kalvaitis, & Worster, 2016)—and (2) investigate how environmental identity can be nurtured via a

The STEM Storytelling through Podcasts (SSP) project focuses on broadening participation for blind/visually impaired (BVI) and sighted upper elementary students by engaging them with podcast technology to promote access to STEM and introduce students to STEM careers.

Project IntegrateAI is supporting middle school teachers in bringing authentic, inquiry-based natural language processing (NLP) experiences into science classrooms. For students, the project will provide innovative experiences that foster competencies and attitudes toward STEM careers.

This project will develop and study measures of culturally responsive-sustaining education (CR-SE) in computer science (CS)—providing vital tools and evidence to inform the growing CS education field.

Healthcare is becoming robotics reliant. Hands-on learning of assistive and rehabilitation robotics in meaningful contexts such as improving quality of life will broaden the participation of underrepresented students including females and ethnic minorities.

We will develop a unique community-based ecosystem for teaching high school students about how the intersection between rapidly developing technologies such as data science and machine learning impact critical healthcare decisions. Students will learn and apply technological skills valued for high-paying jobs within our workforce and proving the importance of diversity.

Project eSPAC3 aims to develop upper-elementary students’ spatial computational thinking skills and awareness of computationally-intensive careers by designing an immersive Latinx culturally affirming enactive learning experience in Minecraft Education Edition which emphasizes family engagement, near-peer mentorship, peer collaboration and expert modeling.

The AAMASE project is developing and researching a model for engaging high-school-aged African American women from low-income families in STEM-related making and entrepreneurship educational programs.