UL Innovative Education Award
Posted on February 23rd, 2019 by Mary Lord
The UL Innovative Education Award awards up to $250,000 annually to U.S. and Canadian youth empowerment and nonprofit groups with proven programs that use the environment as a pathway to STEM learning (E-STEM) and community engagement. Apply by March 12, 2019.
Filed under: Grades 9-12, K-12 Outreach Programs, Special Features | Comments Off on UL Innovative Education Award
Tags: Contest, Curriculum, Environmental Education, Environmental Engineering, Environmental science, STEM education, UL Innovative Education Awards
Soft-drink bottlers worldwide depend on diminishing supplies of clean water. Here’s how Coke copes.
The human body is an engineering marvel, but ligaments snap and organs fail. What if replacement parts could be grown in the lab – or by patients themselves? That’s the exciting frontier of tissue engineering and regenerative medicine that biomedical engineers, scientists, and physicians are exploring, with tantalizing results.
The work of engineers is all around us, but many students don’t know about the exciting careers they could pursue by studying engineering. That’s particularly true for girls and students of color. 
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Science research competitions can spur confidence and open college doors, but many students – particularly those from underrepresented groups – don’t know about these opportunities. The Society for Science & the Public seeks to broaden participation through its Advocate Grant Program, which offers training, a $3,000 stipend, and paid trip to Washington, D.C., for individuals to help three to five underserved students navigate the transition from conducting to presenting their research at a competition. Apply by March 5, 2019. 
Health clinics in the developing world often are noisy places, making it doubly difficult for medics to hear whether a child has pneumonia or other potentially fatal respiratory illness. So engineers and doctors at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Md., teamed up to reinvent the stethoscope using audio technology and artificial intelligence.
A major new consensus study from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, underscores the vital role of teachers in creating the hands-on, multidisciplinary STEM education for every student envisioned by the Next Generation Science Standards. The report also calls for more creation and sharing of free educational materials so teachers no longer have to spend hours each week searching for curriculum.
Spatial visualization – the ability to imagine objects from different angles – is a key STEM problem-solving skill that varies widely by gender, race, and cultural background. Yet it’s rarely taught. The University of Colorado-Boulder’s College of Engineering developed an inexpensive training program that closed STEM performance gaps so well it’s required of all incoming engineering students. The curriculum is now available for free online so any school can advance STEM equity. 
