College receives five grants since July
Faculty members in the College of Education have recently received five new grants for projects in student success, STEM education, early physics education, and high school aviation curriculum.
Carla Johnson, associate dean for Engagement and Global Partnerships, received $24.5 million in funding from the United States Department of Education for a seven-year project called GEAR UP (Gaining Early Awareness and Readiness for Undergraduate Programs). GEAR UP will increase the number of Indiana students who graduate from high school and are prepared to enter and succeed in college. The project, which will directly impact 7,000 children, will create and expand numerous services and experiences for students across the state and generate research that explores student learning, persistence and college attendance.
Professor Brenda Capobianco is the principal investigator of UPDATE, a $2 million grant from the National Science Foundation. Co-primary investigators from the College of Education are faculty members David Eichinger, Selcen Guzey, Sanjay Rebello and Minjung Ryu. This team of faculty will examine the college learning experiences that create great future STEM teachers. They will work directly with 240 undergraduate students studying elementary education over five years to broaden the STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) learning landscape by integrating engineering design principles across five required undergraduate science courses. The intent is to establish a new generation of high-quality, exemplary elementary STEM educators while redesigning an existing elementary science teacher preparation model.
Professors Lynn Bryan and Ala Samarapungavan are partners on a $2.64 million grant with Concord Consortium (principal investigator). Bryan will serve as principal investigator for the Purdue portion of the grant. Purdue is directly responsible for $875,000 of the $2.64 million grant.
The project team will explore young children’s learning of physical science concepts involving matter and its changes in the context of model-centered, inquiry-based instruction that involves the use of dynamic technology-based visualizations.
This project builds upon work done in Modeling in Primary Grades (MPG): Science Learning through Content-Rich Inquiry, a project by Samarapungavan and Bryan that was funded by the National Science Foundation from 2012 to 2016.
Assistant Professor Minjung Ryu received a two-year NSF exploratory pathway grant for Project RESET: Refugee Youth Engaging in Critical STEM Literacy and Learning. Her project builds on earlier work supported by a College of Education Launch the Future grant in collaboration with faculty members Dan Shepardson, Wayne Wright and Trish Morita-Mullaney.
Project RESET engages resettled Burmese refugee youth in STEM learning activities. The after school program advances youth’s knowledge about weather and climate change, English competence and critical STEM literacy. Program participants learn, talk and make presentations about weather, and they make digital stories about climate change to communicate with broader audiences. The project builds on participants’ strengths and empowers them as agents who know about science and make changes to the world around them.
Professor Jim Greenan is a partner on a collaborative STEM grant from the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association to develop aviation-related science and math curriculum for high schools across America. The program that results will be the first-of-its-kind, offering students comprehensive four-year aviation study options that are aligned to rigorous math and science standards used in many states. The curriculum will be part of the high school initiative of AOPA’s You Can Fly program, which was created to bring more individuals into aviation. This project is a partnership with Purdue’s Polytechnic Institute.