APRIL LINDALA
Indigenous Women Working within the Sciences
NSF Awards: 1649082
2018 (see original presentation & discussion)
Grades 9-12, Graduate, Adult learners
Boozhoo | She:kon | Greetings -
April Lindala nindizhinikaaz (is my name) and I am honored to be the Lead PI on a NSF INCLUDES program entitled Indigenous Women Working within the Sciences. On behalf of our program team, I invite you to Reimagine STEM. This video features clips and photos from three of our Year I activities: Reimagine STEM Summer Youth Academy, the Reimagine STEM Educators Institute, and the Reimagine STEM Fall Summit.
My colleagues and I are from Northern Michigan University in beautiful Marquette, Michigan. NMU is located on the southern shores of Lake Superior and upon the ancestral homelands of the Anishinaabeg. External evaluation for our NSF INCLUDES program is Bowman Performance Consulting based in Wisconsin.
I currently serve as the director of the NMU Center for Native American Studies.
Our IWWS project has two aims: 1) train K-16 STEM educators in American Indian inclusivity in the classroom and 2) increase the number of American Indians seeking to study within the STEM fields, particularly American Indian women.
Two tenets of Native American Studies as a discipline include 1) acknowledging the interconnectivity of all living things and 2) recognizing the deep relationship between Native nations and their traditional homelands. As such, we seek to address how these, and other tenets of Native American Studies, can help to inform teaching methods in STEM classrooms.
Chi miigwech (great thanks), April Lindala, director - NMU Center for Native American Studies
Related Content for Reimagine STEM at NMU
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2017reimagineSTEM
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2017Caminos a la Ciencia - Pathways to Science
April Marchetti
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2015AMPing Up the Teaching and Learning of Mathematics
April Strom
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2016Arizona Mathematics Partnership: AMPing Things Up!
April Strom
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2017Inspiring Our Youngest Mathematicians
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2021Unlocking Pathways at UNCP: A COMPASS for STEM Students
Maria Santisteban
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2021Water Quality Across the Grade Levels
Lindsay Adams
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2021Wind River Elementary Computer Science Collaborative
Karen Melara
George Hein
Professor Emeritus
Your summary of this interesting program mentions three aspect of your program: Reimagine STEM Summer Youth Academy, the Reimagine STEM Educators Institute, and the Reimagine STEM Fall Summit. Do you find that these support each other or are they fairly separate efforts?
David Bonter
Congratulations on a fantastic program and wonderful video. Pure inspiration!
Rachel Shefner
Associate Director
Beautiful video. I liked the use of the term "remembering STEM". It emphasizes the connections to STEM in all of our lives, and that it is not a contrivance. We have much to learn from everyone. The video describes the STEM Educator Institute as a highly impactful piece of this project. Can you describe the expected or measured impact? It is interesting that it includes K-20 educators. How are the teachers interacting across grade levels? What are you expecting to see in classrooms as a result of this?
Sarah Hampton
MS Math and Science Teacher, Volunteer STEAM Coordinator
Like Rachel, the phrase "remembering STEM" resonated with me. It's important for us to recognize and value the STEM practices that have been around in every population before the acronym existed. If your program is successful, I could see others like it reaching different subsets of learners. I grew up in West Virginia and now live in Southwest Virginia. I would like to see something similar connecting Appalachian studies to STEM studies. Did you use another project as a model for your own or is this fairly unique?
Teon Edwards
Such important work. It really can "be great. It can be better than it has been." We need more voices in STEM.
Further posting is closed as the event has ended.