Columbus City Schools teachers tour Ohio State’s Orton Hall Geological Museum as part of the STEAMM Rising Summer Institute.
Dozens of Columbus City Schools teachers started a recent warm summer morning on the campus of The Ohio State University, walking into historic Orton Hall and past the skeleton of the giant theropod dinosaur Cryolophosaurus.
The visit to Orton Hall was a day-long immersion into geology, paleontology and earth sciences. And it was one day in a week for the teachers and administrators at the STEAMM Rising Summer Institute.
The institute is an opportunity for Columbus City teachers to experience a variety of STEAMM (science, technology, engineering, art, mathematics and medicine) activities on campus and to create a plan for taking those activities and skills back to their classrooms and schools.
Teachers were welcomed to a guided tour of the Orton Geological Museum led by collections manager and curator Dale Gnidnovec and studied mineral classification methods. University faculty also shared their expertise.
Loren Babcock, professor in the School of Earth Sciences, spoke to a group of teachers about the science of assembling some of the skeletons of the ancient animals in Orton Hall when all they have at hand are bones or bone fragments.
“How do we go from isolated pieces like this to reconstruct an ancient animal, especially if you don’t have a modern animal that you can go by?” he asked. “So this gets at the question of using limited evidence to infer answers to larger questions, which is what we do in science every single day.”
Year three was the best yet for the STEAMM Rising Summer Institute. We continue to work with our great partners to develop these incredible experiential learning opportunities.
- Terri Bucci, program director for STEAMM Rising, associate professor of mathematics teacher education, Ohio State Mansfield
Northland High School teacher Christopher Klemm has worked with the summer institute program for three years as a facilitator. He said the program can help teachers understand the many opportunities in the STEAMM fields and, in turn, share that information with students.
“What I’ve always liked about it are the careers that you’re exposed to. The first year we toured all the different colleges in the medical areas. … So you’re learning about careers and job opportunities that we never saw,” he said. “The variety of careers are much larger than you really think they are. And this is what students can have a problem with – they really don’t know what’s out there for them.”
Some of the classroom experiences for the week included visits to the College of Veterinary Medicine, participating in the BioEYES education program that provides classroom-based learning opportunities using live zebrafish, and tours of the Center for Design and Manufacturing Excellence and the Student Entrepreneurs’ Center.
“There are some more challenging concepts, sure. But some of the stuff like looking at different fossils and looking at different bones, they could do that,” said Valerie Hunt, a kindergarten teacher at Berwick Alternative Elementary School. “Or the zebrafish yesterday. (Students could) look at different parts of that experiment and see what happens when you interact with two of them at the same time.”
The summer institute experience is part of STEAMM Rising, the ongoing partnership with the university, the city of Columbus, Columbus City Schools and Columbus State Community College (CSCC) to strengthen STEAMM courses and career pathways for students pursuing undergraduate studies in STEAMM fields.
Ohio State’s Office of Academic Affairs also supports the teaching and learning opportunities STEAMM Rising offers.
“Year three was the best yet for the STEAMM Rising Summer Institute. We continue to work with our great partners to develop these incredible experiential learning opportunities,” said Terri Bucci, program director for STEAMM Rising and associate professor of mathematics teacher education at the Mansfield Regional Campus.
“Everyone on the team, from our instructors and faculty to industry partners to the teachers who take time out of their summer break, we continue to work toward a common goal for access and visibility in STEAMM fields for the students in central Ohio.”
Pam Artrip, a curriculum supervisor for Columbus City Schools, was in her second year in the summer program. She said the partnerships and collaborations from the week will carry over into the classroom in the fall.
“It’s been amazing to be able to … have folks here from Ohio State as well as Columbus State working with our teachers … to help them build their background knowledge, as well as being able to give them opportunities for things that they can take back to the classroom,” she said. “In my opinion, it’s so important for our kiddos to have those opportunities to be ready to go into STEAMM fields, and this is building that bridge from the K-12 experience into the college experience.”
