On January 24th, 2020, Mrs. Marci Train, a teacher at the two-room Long Island School in Maine’s Casco Bay, set sail for the Southern Ocean as part of a partnership between MMSA and the Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences team. Marci joined Senior Research Scientist Barney Balch and several other Bigelow Laboratory scientists on this… [Read More]
AR Girls Registration Open for Summer 2020
AR Girls registration is open for the summer 2020 workshop program which will run in three art centers across Maine: Fiddlehead Art and Science Center in Gray, Wintergreen Art Center in Presque Isle and Waterfall Arts in Belfast. The AR Girls project is the first of its kind in the nation aimed at increasing the participation… [Read More]
OpenSciEd to Release New NGSS-Designed Units in February!
Looking for high-quality, open-source, NGSS-designed middle school science units? OpenSciEd will be releasing the second round of open-source, NGSS-designed middle school science units in February! OpenSciEd (www.openscied.org) was launched to ensure that any science teacher, anywhere can access and download freely available, high quality, locally adaptable full-course science instructional materials. Each OpenSciEd unit undergoes an… [Read More]
Reflecting on 2019 at MMSA
Through our professional learning opportunities and research/evaluation activities MMSA has been building capacity to meet the challenges we see ahead for STEM education in Maine and across the country. Check out these highlights and join us as we work together to create lasting systemic reform for STEM education! Census of Community-Based Environmental Learning… [Read More]
Scholarship Availability MIT Science and Engineering Program for Teachers
The MIT Alumni Club of Maine invites Maine middle school and high school science, engineering, and math teachers to apply for a Club scholarship to the MIT Science and Engineering Program for Teachers (SEPT) July 5 – July 11, 2020. SEPT is a one-week residential program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, MA…. [Read More]
Census of Community-Based Environmental Learning in Maine 2019 Report
PRESS CONFERENCE AND CELEBRATION for the release of the Census of Community-Based Environmental Learning in Maine 2019 Report Legislators, educators, school administrators, and community organizations all gathered together on Monday January 13, 2020 in the Hall of Flags at the Maine State House to celebrate the release of the Census of Community-Based Environmental Learning, a… [Read More]
A Visit from John Cruickshank, Senior NSF Official
MMSA welcomed a senior NSF official, John Cruickshank, for a site visit to review our six current NSF-funded projects and to share news about upcoming funding opportunities. Mr. Cruickshank oversees policy, grants, and conflict management for NSF educational research programs, and serves as a senior advisor across many aspects of the agency. Some years ago, John… [Read More]
$1.5 Million Grant Helps Bring Computational Thinking to Maine Classrooms
For Immediate Release: Thursday, September 19, 2019 With the help of a $1.5 million grant from the National Science Foundation, the Maine Mathematics and Science Alliance (MMSA) will be working to support rural teachers and students from the Gulfs of Maine and Mexico as they integrate computational thinking into their innovative, community-based citizen science projects…. [Read More]
STEMeX | Mixing Hands-on Science Inquiry with Personal Storytelling
In 2016, the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) created a special research initiative named “STEMeX” (STEM Expert Facilitation of Family Learning in Libraries and Museums). This is the only project at MMSA that engages our research staff in performing evaluation of a federal program. Awards were made to four universities and museums to… [Read More]