Category: Education & Outreach

In early June, Laurel Saito of the University of Nevada, Reno spearheaded the WC-WAVE Interdisciplinary Modeling Course in Boise, Idaho. Boise State University welcomed students from Idaho, Nevada, and New Mexico for the course that was funded by the WC-WAVE grant. Boise State has a full report of the course up on their website—the following is an excerpt from that report, written by Kathleen Tuck.

Educators from seven different New Mexico Informal Science Education Network (NM ISE Net) institutions supported the 2015 Energize New Mexico Teacher Professional Development Institute in Farmington at the beginning of June. Twenty-two elementary and middle school teachers representing three school districts gathered at the Farmington Museum for a five-day workshop to learn about energy and connections to literacy and assessment. The course was based on WestEd’s Making Sense of Science Energy course with some additional material about New Mexico’s energy resources.

Our STEM Advancement Program (STEMAP) welcomes 15 students to the NM EPSCoR community this week at New Mexico Tech. These students will be working for the next eight weeks on research at the main campuses of New Mexico State University, New Mexico Tech, and University of New Mexico.

In early May, NM EPSCoR sponsored a Software Carpentry Workshop at UNM. Software Carpentry is a volunteer organization whose goal is to make scientists more productive, and their work more reliable, by teaching them basic computing skills. This example-driven two-day workshop taught core computing skills to help participants be more productive and effective, alternating short tutorials with hands-on practical exercises. Participants were encouraged to help one another and to apply what learned to their own research problems during the workshop.

This blog is a long time coming, but as most of you know, the 2015 All Hands Meeting took place on April 17, 2015. We had a packed house at the New Mexico Tech Fidel Center, and the day was spent collaborating and networking. The morning sessions helped the group examine implicit biases, and the afternoon sessions combined two components together to discuss progress in the project thus far as well as ideas for the future. The luncheon keynote was presented by NSF EPSCoR Program Officer Audrey Levine.

On March 8-10, Dr. Laura Crossey and Dr. Karl Karlstrom lead their geothermal class (provided by funding from NM EPSCoR) on a trip to White Rock Canyon in northern New Mexico. The class looked at the timing of recent volcanics, as well as the expressions of faults and fluid flow exposed in the canyon. Keep reading to see pictures from the trip!

As part of an initiative to shine a light on the benefits of community college education, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and Representative Ben Ray Luján toured Santa Fe Community College and it's new Trades and Advanced Technology Center.

Last fall, the STEM Advancement Program (STEMAP) Coordinators (including myself) began recruiting for this summer’s group of undergraduate summer researchers. We traveled 2,463 miles and 40 hours to visit 14 campuses to share information about our 2015 STEMAP program; see the map below. All that effort paid off!

Just after the start of the new year, NM EPSCoR welcomed 20 post-docs to the Sevilleta National Wildlife Refuge for an intensive three-day program designed to enhance the professional skills of post-doctoral scholars in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) disciplines. NM EPSCoR brought experts from around the country to lead workshop sessions on meeting facilitation, communicating science, writing proposals, career planning, entrepreneurship, mentoring, and more. NM EPSCoR researcher Johanna Blake participated in this year's workshop; she kindly wrote about her experience.

The 2014 New Mexico Journal of Science, published by the New Mexico Academy of Science, is now available for public viewing. This year's Journal is subtitled "Water, Energy, and the Environment," and includes abstracts from participants in the 2014 NMAS Research Symposium.