The Girls on the Run season finale on November 11th at Coconino High School included a Hall of Heroes with many STEM professionals represented! Thank you so much to the following Wonder Women for participating in the 2016 Hall of Heroes! Medical professionals, Dr. Kate Preston, Dr. Margaret Donnelly and Clinical Pharmacist Randee Fullenwider, all shared their experiences in the medical field with the girls. Mechanical Engineer Beth Cooperrider, Lawyer Jennifer Mott, and Wildland Forest Fighter Maggie Knight shared their journeys and careers with the girls. Lowell Observatory Astronomers Dr. Lisa Prato and Dr. Deidre Hunter shared starry wonders, and Lisa Lamberson, owner of Mountain Sports, described the joys and challenges of running a successful store in downtown Flagstaff.
Thank you all for your contributions to empowering our young women through the Girls on the Run Hall of Heroes!
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Kinney Construction Services (KCS) is the most recent business to join the Scientists in the Classroom program, founded by Jillian Worssam, at Sinagua Middle School. KCS is working with one of Gretchen Downey's 8th grade MITe (Middle School Institute of Technology and Engineering) classes, and leading them through the process of commercial construction on an undeveloped site. The first lesson focused on the many different people and careers involved in the construction business, including many engineering roles. KCS introduced an authentic case study that the students will follow through the year, as they continues their monthly outreach with the class. In the spring the students will likely visit the site on a culminating field trip. These highly-engaged students received stress ball construction helmets for answering questions on different jobs from initially surveying a site, designing the layout of the buildings for a site, and discussing how to make the project as energy-efficient and sustainable as possible. KCS is committed to sustainable construction and was the commercial general contractor on NAU's International Pavillion. NAU, KCS and RSP Architects won the prestigious President's Award for Special Achievement, "Best of Show", as well as the coveted Crescordia Award at Arizona Forward's Environmental Excellence Awards. This new building produces as much energy as it uses onsite and is on track to be Arizona's first “Net Zero” energy higher-education facility. It was recognized as a "Building of the Future" and as one of the greenest buildings in the nation. And it is now used to teach a new generation of future citizens! You can see a short video and read more about the building and award in this article by AZ Central, and in the KCS Press Release. KCS is also connecting their expertise in building for the future with the students involvement in the Future City program. The 8th grade MITe students are competing in this design-and-build competition for the 3rd year. Thank you to KCS for joining the Scientists in the Classroom program!
The Scientists in the Classroom program has over twenty business, agency, and non-profit partners that meet monthly with students in a class they are partnered with at Sinagua Middle School. If you are interested in learning more about this program designed to engage students in real-world STEM applications, please contact the STEM Coordinator. By Dave Engelthaler, Associate Professor at the Translational Genomics Research Institute and the Chair of the Northern Arizona Leadership Alliance. This column was adapted from the keynote speech, given by the author, at Science Foundation Arizona's "Giving a Voice to STEM" Conference at NAU on September 30, 2016. I have often referred to Flagstaff as the Shining City on Arizona’s Hill. It is no accident that I borrow this phrase from the famous, precisely American, ideal of a “Shining City on a Hill”. The early pilgrims imagined that they could create such a community for themselves after escaping the historical norms of European controls on destiny. Three hundred years later John F. Kennedy reminded of this founding ideal, stating that the world was watching our shining city and that we must live up to our promise; shortly there after, we embarked on one of the greatest journeys of all time and put a man’s foot on the moon (Flagstaff had something to do with that, more on that below). Twenty years later, Ronald Reagan again reminded us of this American City on a Hill ideal; and while we may not often remember Reagan as a champion of science, he was convinced during his tenure to not only not cut the budget of the National Science Foundation, but rather double it, before he left office. But, as under Kennedy and Reagan and other presidents in before and after, no matter what our economic and cultural condition, we have always led the way in advancing humanity through the sciences. It is this ideal that convinces me that in Flagstaff, we are a Shining STEM City on Arizona’s Hill. In August of 2012, a group of Flagstaff Leaders, Businessmen, Educators, Scientists, and Concerned Citizens gathered in the woods on the base of the San Francisco Peaks. This group coalesced around the idea that Flagstaff is a STEM-rich City and that we as a community, businesses and schools, elected leaders and CEOs, teachers and families, needed to collectively band together to bring this rich surrounding to bear on the education of our children and enrich our communities. There, up on our Hillside, we all mutually pledged our time, talent and resources towards making the STEM City ideals happen. In short – our goal was to have the most STEM literate graduates living and working in a thriving STEM-based economy. We also had a unofficial motto for the day: “Dare Mighty Things”, which we borrowed from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, who had, just the preceding night, coordinated the landing of the Curiosity Rover on Mars (and again, Flagstaff had something to do with this mission). And we both stole that from Teddy Roosevelt’s famous “Far better it is to dare mighty things” speech. Historian, Fredrick Jackson Turner, just a few years before TR’s famous speech, gave us his “Frontier Thesis”, and proclaiming that with the end of the American Frontier, so might be the end the American spirit. While Jackson aptly, and controversially, linked Americanism and American spirit to the discovery and exploration of the American Frontier, I feel that he missed the mark in not understanding the new frontiers that we would identify and explore. Our increased understanding and use of science and engineering opened up brand new frontiers, beyond land and sea. One such Frontier, The Space Frontier, was no longer a pastoral landscape to watch from afar. Our STEM City has been at the forefront of the exploration of this new frontier, from the discovery of Pluto, to the training of Apollo astronauts in our backyard, to the camera control of the Mars Rover from our USGS facility, and now finally to the deep space explorations through our Discovery Channel telescope, providing insight into the beginnings of our universe and images of a frontier previously unseen. Likewise, Flagstaff is home to TGen and the new Pathogen and Microbiome Institute at NAU, where some of the brightest minds are exploring another previously unseen universe – the microbiome. Every day, scientists in Flagstaff are embarking on the incredible journey into the human microbiome – the unseen ecosystem of bacteria and viruses and fungi that live on and in the human body. We are trying to understand how these microbes live, compete, collaborate and otherwise interact during our healthy and disease states. We, ourselves, our bodies, are the new frontier – and again that frontier exploration is here in our STEM City. And we could go on about the new frontiers ventured by W.L.Gore engineers and SenesTech scientists and MNA paleontologists and Park Service geologists. The frontier is here in our STEM City and some of the greatest pioneers are the trainers of our next generation– the teachers and education professionals of our great public, charter and private schools. Most are ready, willing and able to interact with all of these resources; and some, like former STEM City Teacher of the Year Jillian Worssam, just kick down the door and say: “Let’s do this thing!” Our STEM City is Worssam’s wildly successful Scientists in the Classroom. It is the Flagstaff Festival of Science (the longest running one in the country). We are the Coconuts; we are the Annual STEMMY'S Awards Ceremony; the STEM Art Competition; and the Super Bowl of STEM in the Dome event (where upwards of 8% of Flagstaff turns out!); we are the Space Station Science Experiment and the High Altitude Balloon Launches; and the superstar Killip Kindergarten Chess team that likes to challenge our Mayor. We are seventh-grade girls wearing lab coats inside a world-class research lab and we are a group of high schoolers rafting down our majestic Canyon to learn our geologic past. We are the Chamber Coding Camps. We are grad students teaching and learning in the K-12 classroom. We are parents, students and teachers on a hill having a star party. We are, in a phrase, America’s First STEM Community. Arizona, and the rest of the country, is watching our shining STEM City
and we must live up to our promise. The 4th grade students at Killip Elementary School have been studying alternative energy systems to determine what energy source would be the best for their school and neighborhood. The three teachers (Mrs.’s Hansen, Hart, and Taylor) have over 90 energetic students participating in this unit! Note that they will soon have a fourth teacher to reduce class sizes. Three Flagstaff STEM Professionals presented three 25-minute sessions to the classes. Kelly Paduchowski from Prometheus SOLAR brought in a large solar panel, and talked to the students about the great solar energy potential in Arizona. Kelly is a Project Manager at Promethus Solar. She is also a certified photovoltaic installation professional. Kelly has been highlighted in a previous post when she represented Prometheus at Willow Bend Environmental Education Center. Ken Kotalik from Primus Wind Power brought in a wind turbine and talked to the students about having both gride-tied wind power and also off-the-grid wind systems that could also include solar panels. Ken is the Director of North American Sales, for Primus Wind Power. He has been working in and around the renewable energy field for 15 years and he built his own passive and active solar straw bale house in Flagstaff. Lucas Bair, from the Grand Canyon Research and Monitoring Center of the US Geological Survey, showed a video on hydropower and illustrated to students how a dam works to generate electric power. Lucas is an environmental and natural resource economist with expertise in water resource and energy economics and policy. His research includes natural resource valuation and decision and benefit-cost analysis with a focus on resources in Glen and Grand Canyons along with large river systems such as the Sacramento-San Joaquin and the Brazilian Amazon. STEM City and Killip Elementary School thank you for your educational and engaging presentations to the students! Stay tuned, as the students are now finalizing their reports on which of these three alternative energy sources should be used to power their school and neighborhood!
Guest Blog by Karin Wadsack, Project Director, Northern Arizona University Northern Arizona University’s Dynamic and Active Systems Lab (DASL) in the department of mechanical engineering partnered with the NAU Upward Bound summer program to engage high school students in university research on energy harvesting and the development of drone technology. Twenty-one high school soon-to-be juniors, from across Northern Arizona, tested solar panels, built electrical circuits, and participated in a “wildlife-tracking hide-and-seek” exercise using unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). The students spent five weeks on campus at NAU learning about climate change and energy science and engineering. They performed hands-on activities and experiments, and went on a ‘field trip’ to the Engineering building to perform outdoor activities with the UAVs. “These experiences were invaluable for our UB students,” said Jacob Lesandrini, an instructional specialist with the Upward Bound Program. “They were pushed to understand the science behind energy, energy consumption, and the future of energy use in the country.” DASL faculty advisor Dr. Michael Shafer and students Gregory Hahn, Heather Cantin, Lauren Adoram-Kershner, Kellan Rothfus, and Matthew Robertson worked with the high school students over the course of several lessons and activities. DASL is currently engaged in two National Science Foundation grants: one to develop and test energy harvesting technologies for use on marine mammals tracking tags, and one to develop and deploy an open-source design for unmanned aerial vehicles to be used in tracking wildlife transmitter signals for ecological research.
Guest Blog by Karin Wadsack, Project Director, Northern Arizona University The Arizona Wind for Schools project partnered with the NAU’s Upward Bound programs and the Boys & Girls Club summer camp at Willow Bend in June to teach 48 young students about wind energy through hands-on engineering design activities.
Fourteen students in the Upward Bound Math/Science academy also worked with Wind for Schools to build windmills and learn basics about wind energy. In particular, while researching and analyzing various forms of renewable energy, students had the opportunity to move away from the theoretical and put their knowledge to work. Students were given a task, a collection of materials from which to build, and work time. “It was a powerful experience seeing students working together, going through iterations in their design, and completing the assigned task,” said Jacob Lesandrini, instructional specialist for Upward Bound at NAU. “Students not only had to have the background knowledge in renewable energy, but they also had to understand how to tackle a problem and work in a team. It’s exactly the sort of work they can expect in college and beyond, and we were very excited they had this opportunity.“ Wind for Schools project director Karin Wadsack and mechanical engineering undergraduate student Tessa Palazzolo worked with the high school students over the course of several lessons and activities.
The Wind for Schools project is funded by a grant from the United States Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory.
Increasing the Number of Women in the STEM Workforce
A recent journal article in the Public Library of Science (PLOS) entitled “Women 1.5 Times More Likely to Leave STEM Pipeline after Calculus Compared to Men: Lack of Mathematical Confidence a Potential Culprit”, by J. Ellis, B. Fosdick, and C. Rasmussen, had some fascinating information and conclusions:
In this study, the proportions of students who cited reasons for not entering Calculus II were comparable across men and women, except for one: “I do not believe I understand the ideas of Calculus I well enough to take Calculus II.” This lack of confidence was cited by 35% of women, and only 14% of men, all of whom originally intended on pursuing a STEM career. Women switching from STEM pathways are citing a lack of understanding of the material in Calculus I as a reason for not continuing their STEM studies significantly more often than men. An article by K. Piatek-Jimenez, “On the Persistence and Attrition of Women in Mathematics”, states that: “Confidence in mathematical ability may also be a possible reason why women do not choose to pursue mathematics. Women frequently report lower self-confidence in mathematics than their equally talented male peers. This trend is true even amongst the most mathematically talented students.” Lack of confidence plagues women in other fields as well. "The Confidence Gap", by Katty Kay and Claire Shipman, cite a number of studies. Hewlett-Packard found that women applied for a promotion only when they believed they met 100 percent of the qualifications listed for the job; while men applied when they thought they could meet 60 percent of the job requirements. Brenda Major, a social psychologist at the University of California at Santa Barbara, started studying the problem of self-perception decades ago. “I would set up a test where I’d ask men and women how they thought they were going to do on a variety of tasks.” She found that the men consistently overestimated their abilities and subsequent performance, and that the women routinely underestimated both, while the actual performances did not differ in quality. “It is one of the most consistent findings you can have.” Margie Warrell, in a recent Forbes article, “For Women To Rise We Must Close 'The Confidence Gap' wrote: “…wherever I’ve worked in the world, I’ve consistently that a fundamental lack of belief in our own value, worth and ability to achieve consistently tempers female ambition and holds women back." She cited an eight-year study by Wiebke Bleidorn that analyzed data from over 985,000 men and women across 48 countries, from Norway to New Zealand, Kuwait to South Korea, asking them to rate the phrase: “I see myself as someone who has high self-esteem”, and found that across the board – regardless of culture or country, men have higher self-esteem than women. “Math for Girls, Math for Boys”, by A.K. Whitney in the Atlantic, stated that only one in ten contestants in the International Math Olympiad are female and many teams have no girls at all. Last year’s U.S. Team, which took gold for the first time in 21 years, was all male. Sherry Gong, who in 2007 was the second American girl in International Math Olympiad history to get the gold medal, recalled getting a pep talk during a competition from her coach. “I thought I was doing really badly, but ... she said girls tend to underestimate how well they are doing.” What can we do to increase confidence and foster perseverance for all students to succeed in high-level mathematics and STEM studies? Programs to increase confidence and persistence, as well as STEM skills, are growing in STEM City (aka Flagstaff). Highlighted programs include: Girls on the Run (GOTR), celebrating its 20th anniversary this year, has a primary goal of increasing self-confidence in young women. See this STEM City blog by Marney Babbitt on how you can participate. Growth Mindset is being used by a number of teachers in Flagstaff including Elii Chapman, a math and science teacher at Flagstaff Junior Academy, and the runner up for the 2016 Coconino County Teacher of the Year. (Look up Carol Dweck and Angela Duckworth to learn more.) All-Girl Events/Competitions including all girls’ math or chess tournaments is another way to reduce the social issues that come with young women in competitive environments with young men. The Flagstaff Chess Club will hold its 3rd Annual All Girls Chess Tournament in January, hosted by a strongly supportive Lowell Observatory staff, and including a lunchtime talk by a female astronomer. The Cactus-Pine Girl Scouts have held all girls engineering events, coding workshops, and after-school STEM activities for local students. With Math I Can is being promoted by FUSD math specialist Jane Gaun, and others. This is a pledge we can all take to not make negative comments about mathematics! INTEL Math and other math education courses are offered to local math teachers through FUSD and the Coconino County Educational Services Agency (CCESA). Cash for Calculators is an initiative of FUSD and the Greater Flagstaff Chamber of Commerce to encourage businesses to purchase graphing calculators for schools so students can use them during the year and be more prepared for the exams that require these calculators. Engineering is Elementary (EiE) has design challenges that encourage girls and all students to increase persistence, creativity, confidence, and more. The award-winning curricula from the Museum of Science Boston (MOS) is widely available in Flagstaff. FUSD has two EiE kits at each grade level in all ten elementary schools. Thanks to funding from the Arizona Community Fund of Flagstaff (ACFF), the CCESA has all 20 kits available for K-5 teachers in any school to check out after they have taken the free workshop on using the curricula. STEM City, with funding from ACFF, the W.L. Gore Foundation and the Ernest and Evelyn Chilson Fund, have four out-of-school time kits available to Girl Scout troops, STEM clubs, etc. The nationally-recognized Center for Science Teaching and Learning at NAU is working with Flagstaff's U.S. Geological Survey's Astrogeology Center and the MOS to create three new engineering units with an astrogeology theme and cutting-edge science. Ready.Set.Code is a Greater Flagstaff Chamber of Commerce initiative working to increase computer and app coding skills in students. Scott Hathcock and cohorts at the Chamber launched Ready.Set.Code with both “Hack the Class”, and the “Summer of Code” events, after least year’s initial coding camps at College America were such a success. Robotics Camps and Clubs are both growing in Flagstaff. The County Parks and Recreation Department held two lego robotics camps in June and has room available for their two upcoming camps the first week of August. The CocoNuts robotics team leads summer camps for students and has an upcoming camp for adults interested in coaching robotics. The camp is only $20 and is coming July 26 and 27th if you are interested! The Girl Scouts recently hosted a Video Game Design Workshop for 50 girls at NAU. Killip Elementary has a K-2 coding club, FJA has a middle school coding club, and we know that the many schools with robotics teams use coding to get those robots moving! STEM City has held two free Code.org workshops with master teacher Janice Mak, and also freely loans out instruction materials. STEM City also has engineering kits, bioscience kits, and more, to freely loan out to teachers and home-school parents. Coconino Community College now offers two engineering courses as well as advanced math and physics, and has an Engineering Pathways grant to increase engineering in middle schools, high schools and at CCC. Northern Arizona University has a higher percentage of women in science and engineering than most colleges and universities (data coming soon)! Please contact STEM City if you have programs you would like highlighted in a blog post or in the STEM Community e-letter. And thank you for all you do to increase both skills and confidence in our youth! Thank you to Melissa Sevigny of KNAU and the Arizona Science and Innovation Desk for the interview on this article and inspiring this post! Two STEM City Stars have received their advanced degrees from NAU. Sarah Burcher earned her Master's degree on April 20th and Aaron Tabor received his Doctorate on April 27th. Congratulations!
Aaron worked with Dr. Rob Kellar in both the NAU Tissue Engineering & Regenerative (TERM) Lab as well as at Development Engineering Sciences. His dissertation research was on using plate-rich-plasma on an electrospun collagen scaffold to aid in full thickness wound healing. Aaron also serves as an instructor at both Coconino Community College and Northern Arizona University! You can read more about Sarah's and Aaron's contributions to STEM City and Killip Elementary School in this post from just over a year ago!
Guest blog by Carrie Jenkins and Rick Treadway, 7th grade science teachers at Sinagua Middle School On April 11, 2016 a group of 48 Sinagua Middle School 7th graders headed into Oak Creek Canyon for an afternoon of water testing at Slide Rock State Park. After eating lunch at the park, we walked to the Apple Barn where we watched a short documentary about Oak Creek called “Loved to Death: The Story of Oak Creek.” The video documented the 2014 Oak Creek Ambassador Program in which concerned citizens with the support of local university students from U of A, NAU, ASU, and the Friends of Oak Creek, removed large quantities of trash brought into the park and along the creek. Oak Creek is claimed to be the 3rd purest water in the world at its source. However, the trash left behind by the hundreds of thousands of visitors each year directly impacts the water quality of Oak Creek and leads to increased levels of e. coli causing adverse effects to the local ecosystem. Under the direction of U of A microbiologists in a mobile laboratory the students tested E.coli bacteria levels, water flow rates, pH, turbidity, nitrates and dissolved oxygen. Students learned proper water sampling protocol, testing procedures and levels that indicate healthy conditions for organisms within the aquatic ecosystem. Most importantly, we learned that we can each be an ambassador for Oak Creek. Thank you to the SFAz+8 Pathways grant through Coconino Community College for funding the bus for this fieldtrip!
Many people in our community believe deeply that investing in the next generation – our students – is essential to our future. As participants in the Flagstaff STEM City movement, we support the outstanding teachers who work daily to open doors and create challenging opportunities for our students. This week Flagstaff bids farewell to one of those outstanding teachers – Kaci Heins of Northland Preparatory Academy, who is departing to take an educational leadership position with NASA’s Space Center, Houston.
For the last 9 years, Kaci’s students from the Peak School, Mt. Elden Middle School, and NPA have flown high indeed. They have launched rockets; learned robotics and 3D printing; sent an experiment to the International Space Station; and created payloads for and released high altitude balloons to analyze myriad results. Kaci’s expertise, enthusiasm, and commitment to her students brought her recognition as our Flagstaff STEM Teacher of the Year, Arizona Middle School Science Teacher of the Year, Air Force Association National Aerospace Teacher of the Year, and this year’s Viola Award for Science Education. STEM City recognizes that we must all work hard to support outstanding teachers who engage and mentor our students. Kaci is taking her talent to an incredible platform, developing programs to inspire students across the country the way she has inspired and challenged her Flagstaff students. Kaci always challenged her students and all of us to “Dare Mighty Things,” and she continues to lead by example. Please join us in thanking her for all that she has done for Flagstaff’s next generation. We’ll be eagerly watching, in cyberspace and elsewhere, for her next adventures in outer space! Laura Huenneke David Engelthaler Mindy Bell Flagstaff STEM City |