Newton Public Schools is hiring a Coordinator of K-8 Science and Tech/Engineering to lead curriculum and instruction for Grades K-8 across the district.
Category Archives: Opportunities
Sign Up by Mar. 8 to Judge the Western Mass. Virtual Science & Engineering Fair
The Western Massachusetts Science & Engineering Fair will be all virtual this year, and judges are needed to evaluate the video submissions from middle- and high-school teams. Judges will attend an online orientation session on March 10 at 5PM and will review video submissions on their own schedules during the following times: March 14-18 for high-school teams and April 11-15 for middle-school teams. Sign up by March 8 to be a judge for either the high-school or middle-school fair.
McAuliffe Center Offers Paid Summer Internships to College Students
Undergraduate and graduate students may apply by April 15 for one of four paid summer internships for undergraduate or graduate students offered by the Christa McAuliffe Center at Framingham State University in the areas of:
- Digital Illustration and Brand Identity
- Multimedia Production
- Science Writing
- Stem Learning Experience Development
Cambridge Science Festival: Entry Proposals Due Tomorrow, Mar. 1
The Cambridge Science Festival will be held virtually this year: 30 Days of Science throughout April. If you have ideas for entries you’d like to offer — hands-on activities, lab tours, videos, etc. — submit them by March 1. CSF is looking for fun, hands-on offerings from a wide range of people, highlighting science from the past year. For more information, email jbill@mit.edu.
Grades 7-8: Register NOW for Virtual MIT Spark, Mar. 13, 20 & 27
This year MIT’s Spark enrichment program for Grades 7-8 will be run virtually over three Saturdays, March 13, 20 & 27 . MIT students run Spark and teach its courses, which may be one-day stand-alone classes or sequences that span multiple Saturdays. Classes will be held each Saturday during 11AM-1PM and 2PM-5PM. The cost is $40 per student regardless of the number of courses taken, and there is generous, need-based financial aid available. Register by March 4 with your course choices to be included in the lottery for course placements. To maximize the number of time blocks in which you have classes, for each time block you should rank at least 3 classes and star at least 6 classes. After the lottery, there will be first-come/first-served registration for remaining spots until March 10. For more information, email spark@mit.edu. Among the 84 classes available are these STEM-related ones:
- Introduction to MIT App Inventor
- Introduction to Proof Logic
- Visual Accessibility with MIT App Inventor
- Spreadsheets are Cool
- How To Quickly Prototype an AI Chip
- Introduction to Computer Programming
- Create Your Own Conversational AI Agents
- Siri, self-driving cars, and COVID: what can (and can’t) AI do for you?
- Random Forests: Introduction to Machine Learning
- Satellite Engineering
- What in the world is plasma?
- Metals & Metallurgists & Manufacturing
- How To Make Mediocre Furniture
- Yeeting Rockets
- Intro to Electronics
- Tessellations of 2D planes & 3D space
- Infinities
- Cellular Automata
- Information and the Redundancy of English
- Fractals!
- Fibonacci Numbers! Featuring Recursion
- Mod Mathematics and Mod Art
- Introduction to Number Theory
- The Science of COVID-19
- Debates in Bioethics
- Getting to the Bottom of Things
- Antiferromagnetism!!
- How Do We Make Energy?
- How to Build a Virus
- Fusion Energy, Climate Change, and Environmental Racism
- what is DNA, structure and its function
- mRNA vaccine turning people into mutants? Science behind COVID and vaccine
- Light and Radiation: The Invisible World
- The Origin of Everything: Introduction to Cosmology
- Glow Big or Glow home
- Active Galaxies & Supermassive Black Holes
- Introductory cardiology: how the heart beats and breaks
- Stellar graveyard: black holes, neutron stars and more!
- Physics of the Extreme!
- Introduction to Biostatistics and Epidemiology
- Let’s Talk about the Weather!
- Seedy Dealings: The Rise of Plants
- The Microbiome: How much of your body is you?
- The Science of Happiness
- Science and Economics of Climate Change: Understanding Environmental Successes and Failures
- Women’s Health
- Special Relativity
- Microbiome 101: What’s in your poop?
- Nuclear Fusion: Infinite, Clean Energy?
Science Club for Girls: Spring Clubs Have Started
Last week, Science Club for Girls launched its spring semester of Science Clubs with over 70 mentors guiding more than 250 girls through an 8-week curriculum of exploring Planet Earth, including geology, energy, biomes, and recycling. Three-quarters of these girls are from backgrounds underrepresented in STEM fields by race, family income, or first-generation college bound. Here’s a short video of students from the fall semester talking about their favorite projects and their appreciation for their mentors.
Apply by Feb. 16 for Step into STEM: Workshops and Mentoring for HS Students who will be First in their Family to Attend College
Step into STEM is a free, online program of workshops and mentoring for high-school juniors and seniors with parent(s) who never received a bachelor’s or other four-year college/university degree. It features monthly online meetings (2/23, 3/23, 4/13, 5/18, 6/15) with group discussions, 1:1 mentoring, a supportive network of students, and discussions with first-generation scientists. Applications are due February 16. For more information, email the program’s facilitators, who themselves are first-generation STEM majors: Claudia Mazur cmazur@bu.edu and Samuel Domingues samuel.domingues001@umb.edu. This program is an initiative of the Waquoit Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve.
STEM Professionals: Sign Up to Judge the Future Cities Finals Competition
Future City is a project-based STEAM program in which students in Grades 6-8 imagine, research, design, and build cities of the future. Teams work for about four months and compete in regional and finals competitions held in the spring. This year, competitions will be held online on March 6 and April 7. STEM professionals support the competition, either as mentors throughout the fall semester or as judges before and during the regional competitions. You can register online to be a judge. Contact the Regional Judging Coordinator at jake@discoverE.org for more information.
Various STEM Contests for Students
The American Society for Engineering Education notes the following free, online STEM contests open to students:
- MathWorks Math Modeling Contest: Grades 11 & 12 — up to 2 teams per school, of 2-3 students each — tackle real-world math problems online under time and resource constraints. Register by February 19 at 4PM.
- New York Times STEM Writing Contest: Middle/High school students ages 11-19 write an engaging, 500-word explanation of a STEM-related issue or question of their choice. January 19 – March 2.
- ACTE/NASA Student Video Contest: Students of all ages create videos on the theme of Advancing Space Exploration through Manufacturing. Submit entries by April 1.
- EngineerGirl Writing Contest: Grades 3-5, 6-8, and 9-12 submit essays by February 1(!) about engineering’s role in meeting and defeating the challenges presented by COVID-19.
MSMR Student Competition: Enter a Poster, Essay, or Website
The Massachusetts Society for Medical Research will hold its 29th Annual Student Competition, in which New England students in Grades 7-12 learn about a breakthrough in life sciences and report about it via a poster, essay, or website — as if reporting for the What A Year website for science discovery. Awards of up to $500 will be made in two levels: Grades 7-8 and Grades 9-12, with education grants for the teachers/advisors of the winning students. Entries are due by April 30. See the student packet.