St. Louis Public Radio: Program aims to improve science education

Natalia Cantu attaches electrodes to a cockroach leg and taps its spiky hairs with a paintbrush.The neurons in the leg fire rapidly in response, appearing as sharp peaks and valleys on her smartphone. Cantu, who teaches ninth-grade biology in Edinburg, Texas, is in her second year of Washington University’s Master of Science in Biology for […]

St. Louis Post-Dispatch highlights STEMpact program

To help fill a pipeline of future scientists and engineers, many teachers in the St. Louis area are “stemitizing” — integrating science, technology, engineering and mathematics concepts into all school subjects. One such effort, STEMpact’s Teacher Quality program, trains 150 kindergarten through eighth-grade teachers on how to incorporate the concepts into their curriculum in hopes […]

St. Louis area educators attend leadership retreat at Washington University

It’s mid-June and while students are out on summer break, teachers never stop learning. Victorious arms shoot up in the air as towers of playing cards sway precariously on tables. This simple card activity is an example of how teachers can help students develop identities as STEM-capable learners. About 50 educators from school districts throughout […]

Never too late: MS in Biology program graduates first Texas cohort

Sara King was six years old when she started working in the fields. Born to migrant workers in Mexico that resettled in west Texas every summer – the pattern played out until she was 18. “It wasn’t easy,” recalls the now American citizen. “I would miss school. We would be out from May to September. […]

ISP helping pilot new math, technology curriculum in St. Louis schools

It’s mid-afternoon at Walbridge Elementary School and the hallways are buzzing. Literally. Electronic buzzer sounds spill out of classrooms as students work on circuitry projects. Jaime Gilligan, with Washington University’s Institute for School Partnership (ISP), is touring the school with principal Mildred Moore. Walbridge is one of several schools in the St. Louis Public School […]

Students test their engineering might at annual Boeing design challenge

“This is stressful,” Emilia Talarski says in between bites of pizza. She’s worried her balsa wood glider will break. Although, it already has a crack. It happened when she fell while holding it. But she describes it as a happy accident. “It actually made the glider fly better,” says the third grader from MOSAIC Elementary […]

Mobile science lab sparks curiosity in Hawthorn students

I see red! I see green! I see purple! Sporting virtual reality headsets, a group of seventh-graders from Hawthorn Leadership School for Girls, are sharing the different colors they see as they take a virtual tour of brain cells. “I haven’t experienced anything like this before,” Cailyn McGraw says. “Seeing the cells and the cells […]

Sally Elgin: Lessons learned in a life of science

Nowadays Sally Elgin would probably be referred to as gifted or talented. But in the 1950s, a really smart girl was obnoxious or a nerd. “I come from a long line of nerds and it’s not always a good social position to be in,” explains Elgin, the Viktor Hamburger Professor of Arts & Sciences at […]

ISP backed science fair workshop a powerful learning experience

(February 21, 2018 by Molly Davis) On a Saturday afternoon, local elementary school students and their families filed into a classroom for the “Getting Started with Science Fair” workshop, ready to spend the next few hours preparing to apply the scientific method to a question that interested the students. The group listened intently to the opening […]

ISP leads Hour of Code

“I made it move,” an ecstatic Jalen Royston said as he bolted up from his seat, pumping his fists in the air. He’d inputted the correct code to make clouds on his computer screen move to the left. Sporting a “Hello, I’m Awesome” T-shirt, Jalen, a fifth-grader at Barbara C. Jordan Elementary School in The […]