While many of our collaborators are individual community members, STEMCAP has initiated and maintained collaborative relationships with a wide array of community groups and organizations from the arts, humanities, science engagement and communication sectors. Community partnerships allow us to broaden the scope of our programming by bringing in a multitude of perspectives that extend beyond academia and offer YIC students insight into the large variety of ways to contribute to the scientific community and communicate about science and nature in an impactful way.
The UMFA is dedicated to engaging the public with art from around the globe while highlighting the local art community. They also work to demonstrate the power of art in social change and environmental action. Education specialists from the UMFA lead Art-science workshops with scientists and take the students on virtual museum tours, facilitating dialogue about the connections between art, science, and communication.
UMFA & STEMCAP: smART Studnets
UMFA & STEMCAP: Art Connections
Museum Educators that We Work With – Annie Burbidge-Ream & Katie Seastrand
Hawkwatch International’s mission is to protect the environment through public education and engagement, as well as to facilitate species monitoring. Hawkwatch educators work with STEMCAP to teach students about birds of prey and how monitoring raptor populations can help to diagnose ecosystem health.
Rachel Taylor is the founder of Utah Friends of Monarchs. Rachel works with students as part of the Monarch and Milkweed Conservation Project. Her workshops introduce students to monarch biology and the threats to their survival. Students then are led through a planting project, propagating milkweed to place around the Salt Lake Valley. Rachel provides the seeds and disseminates the milkweed once it is large enough to be transplanted.
The CSOE Mission: To make synthetic organic electrochemistry mainstream through the invention of enabling, green, safe, and economic new reactions, the demystification of fundamental electrochemical reactivity, vibrant partnerships with industry, education of a diverse set of scientists and engineers, and by engaging in community-wide education and outreach.
CSOE’s Outreach Coordinator, Victoria Russell, works with STEMCAP to bring Electrochemistry workshops to our YIC facilities. Students have the opportunity to deconstruct the components of a battery and understand the academic and career pathways to chemical and/or electrical engineering.
Clark Planetarium provides unique educational experiences designed to inspire the public to learn more about space and promote public awareness that science is a part of everyone’s daily lives. The Clark Planetarium presented a four-part robotics program with STEMCAP, in which students used computer coding skills to program simple tasks into their robots in order to get them to accomplish certain tasks. Clark Planetarium outreach specialists also partnered with Natalie Gotter, a dance instructor at the University of Utah, to provide an art-science workshop. As the planetarium guided students through navigating their robots, Natalie translated computer coding principles into human-to-human connection and movement.
The Utah Society for Environmental Education’s mission is to promote excellence in environmental education and community engagement to connect all Utahns to their natural world. USEE worked with STEMCAP to put on a webinar event to showcase STEMCAP’s work.
National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is committed to providing science education that aims to provide an enhanced interest in the field of science and the study of life on earth and beyond. NASA scientist Daniella Scalice visited three YIC facilities with STEMCAP and spoke about NASA’s mission to find evidence of life on other planets. She then led the students through a board game that incorporated logistics, budget, cost/benefit analysis, the features of planets and moons, and the life-finding technology NASA employs in their missions.
More recently, STEMCAP has recruited NASA scientists to write a handful of students in a one-on-one pen pal program.
The Seed Library, through the City Library, offers a public space for community members to donate seeds from native and garden plant species for other community members to use in their own yards. Project leader Rikki Longino collaborates with STEMCAP to teach seed-saving at YIC centers on the importance and process of saving seeds, as well as methods for planting and harvesting.
The Hollow Tree Honey Foundation is dedicated to spreading awareness in our community about the challenges our honey bee and native bee populations are facing. Utah is home to about 1,100 native bee species, and most of them are solitary. The work of the foundation focuses on combating habitat fragmentation, the use of pesticides, and a lack of pollinator resources, ensuring the conservation of both species biodiversity and floral abundance. Our commitment to providing free water-wise seed packets has dispersed thousands of pollinator-friendly wildflowers across the Wasatch Front.
Joshua Shutkind from HTHF worked with STEMCAP as a part of the Monarch and Milkweed Conservation Project alongside entomologist Rodolfo Probst to talk about native pollinators, and to help students to make bee boxes.
Other Collaborators
