The National Science Foundation recently gave Tirupalavanam Ganesh, assistant dean for information systems at ASU’s Mary Lou Fulton College of Education, a $1 million grant to pilot the ITEST Learning through Engineering Design and Practice project at two junior high schools in the Mesa Unified School District. Ganesh and his team hope the students will get hooked on technology by using it in innovative and socially relevant ways, he said. Their

About a dozen girls, from 6th through 12th grade, have joined an afterschool program called Universe Quest. Through their participation in this ITEST project, they're learning about astronomy and building their own 3-D, immersive online game that centers around creating characters, who explore the cosmos and answer questions along the way.

Sarita Saju, student from George Washington High School involved in the ITEST-Nano program (also known as Nanotechnology and Bioengineering in Philadelphia Public Schools), recently received top awards at science fairs for her nanotechnology project, titled "Polymer-Wrapped Carbon Nanotubes as Electrode Materials for Supercapacitors." Her project was based on work during her internship with expert scientists from the School of Engineering and

ITEST project the Girl Game Company took its 40 middle school girl participants on a half-day field trip to visit Google headquarters. The girls were able to interact with elite computer engineers, check out what it's like to work in a corporate environment, and present their software creations to Google engineers. Field trips and partnerships like this are important in helping youth understand the real-world application of the skills they

Dr. Tirupalavanam Ganesh and his research team earned a $1 million grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to support a three-year ITEST project titled “Learning through Engineering Design and Practice: Using our Human Capital for an Equitable Future.” The project, which launched this fall in collaboration with the Mesa Unified School District, will provide 96 seventh-, eighth- and ninth-grade students from Powell and Carson junior high

About 50 middle school students and 20 teachers from New Hanover, Brunswick and Pender counties attended a workshop at UNCW . They primarily worked on a program called Squeak, free educational software that allows students to run simple animations to develop and model complex science experiments.

ITEST project Urban Ecology Institute supports science teachers with environmental curricula, materials and training. Of note, UEI’s focus on the needs of urban students and their teachers has led the organization to develop a curriculum on environmental justice and injustice: how power and poverty determine which communities suffer environmental hazards, and which do not.

ITEST project Reach for the Sky is doing more than connecting students to STEM—it has facilitated partnerships between three University colleges, University Extension, the White Earth Tribal College, three Reservation schools, and two businesses. This article highlights Reach for the Sky's program features.

The ITEST X-Tech program's goal is to foster critical thinking among its participants. Drawing from local, underserved populations, this program requires its participants to commit for two years, including summers--90% of participants stick with it.