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Two interdisciplinary education projects selected for New Frontiers Grants
CU Boulder’s inaugural round of the competitive New Frontiers Grant Program
—aimed at fostering interdisciplinary new research directions for CU Boulder—announced four grants, two of which involved education researchers.
"Empowering Newcomer Students: A Multifaceted Approach to Culturally Sustaining STEAM Education and A.I. Integration" is an interdisciplinary team led by Tania Hogan, executive director of the BUENO Center, that addresses how to leverage A.I. tools to support educational experiences through a community cultural wealth lens. The team will integrate families’ STEAM knowledge and experiences into a new educational model to promote culturally sustaining pedagogies through artistic expression, storytelling, creativity and healing.
Led by an engineering researcher, Cresten Mansfeldt, the "Exposure to and Health Effects of After-wildfire Toxicants (ExHEAT) Consortia" team includes education professors Joe Polman and Enrique Lopez. The team will examine the health effects of toxic chemicals produced and mobilized by large wildfires and the additional toxicants derived from burned homes, furniture and vehicles in urban wildfires. Utilizing CU Boulder’s renowned wildfire expertise, they will create community-accessible fire research and education covering human health risks associated with fire-produced contaminates.
After conducting data collection and research, the project teams will compete for the single Launch Phase Grant of $200,000 to be awarded in June 2025.
New science curricula available for all teachers
A coalition of educators from 10 states and led by CU Boulder has released a new series of free science curricula for high school students—touching on issues critical to the lives of young people, from wildfires to rising sea levels and cancer biology.
The new curricula, called OpenSciEd High School, is a three-year high school science program led by the inquiryHub, a research-practice partnership based in the School of Education. The project is guided by Next Generation Science Standards and reflects the collaborative efforts of the OpenSciEd High School Developers’ Consortium, which includes education experts from across the U.S.
Any teacher or school can download these materials at no cost, said William Penuel, distinguished professor of education.
“This project has been a partnership of unprecedented scale in the development of high-quality instructional materials in science,” said Penuel.
Check out the OpenSciEd High School curricula at inquiryhub.net/curricula.
PEER Physics supports teachers from New York to Hawaii
PEER Physics, based in the School of Education, was launched in 2013 by STEM Education Professor Valerie Otero and physics teachers and CU Boulder alumnae Shelly Belleau (Biochem’08) and Emily Quinty (AstroPhys’07) to provide an innovative student-centered approach for teaching and learning high school physics that is anchored in real-world phenomena.
In the PEER (Physics through Evidence, Empowerment through Reasoning) program, students engage in science practices, including building models and developing explanations based on evidence and consensus. All students are invited into the learning community—shifting authority from the instructor and textbook to students and evidence.
PEER Physics participation has ballooned to more than 450 teachers and 120,000 students over the past 10 years.
“Having students learn science by developing their own models helps them build the skills of scientists and a sense of agency for exploring and making sense of the world around them,” said a PEER Physics teacher from Mesa County, Colorado.
PEER Physics offers professional development and curricular resources at peerphysics.org.