Past Grants

A 2016 Science Magazine article revealed a disconnect between climate science progress and education resources, resulting in limited teacher time and awareness about climate change consensus. This lack of education hampers global youth engagement in climate solutions, which underscores the need to bridge the academic-societal climate education gap. The MIT Energy Initiative proposes creating a toolkit that focuses on impactful, student-centered climate education to support these efforts.

Light’s work on embodied education aims to close the gap between the growing body of research on movement and the learning process and the pedagogical strategies that educators use. Light seeks to find ways to help schools integrate physical activity and academic instruction at all levels — for example, teaching elementary school geometry through yoga, middle school physics through martial arts, and high school history through dance.

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Learn more about Jennifer Light's project in the Grantee Spotlight

Higher education institutions — including MIT — lack a full integration of CEJ into its environmental and sustainability programs. This exclusion leads to underrepresented students, including Black, Indigenous, People of Color (BIPOC)individuals, feeling discrimination and isolation within these programs. To truly address global climate justice, it is crucial for higher education to understand how CEJ is taught and its impact on BIPOC students' sense of belonging.

Hands-on manufacturing skills are crucial for success in today's technology-driven world, but the rapid advancement of manufacturing technology creates a gap between industry needs and workforce training. Liu proposes that extended reality offers a promising approach due to its scalability and personalized feedback potential, particularly for non-traditional education pathways.

Climate Interactive’s innovative climate change simulator En-ROADS has been very successful in engaging participants to think about the impact of alternative policies and actions to mitigate and reverse the effects of climate destruction. Yet, meaningful shifts in understanding, policy, and action requires education and understanding at massively greater scales than are currently possible with the En-ROADS’ facilitation model. Cook seeks to explore game-based facilitation.

Lemelson-MIT researchers plan to create an inventive curriculum for elementary students between 9 and 11 years old, centered on building a prototype shoe with lights. The curriculum addresses waning interest in STEM among young learners, focusing on diversity and multiculturalism to engage students from different backgrounds in the innovation process. Ultimately, this curriculum aims to boost diversity in the innovation ecosystem.

Building on the success of Materials Initiative for Comprehensive Research Opportunity (MICRO), a program providing research opportunities to underrepresented undergraduate students, Sandland proposes MICRO 2.0: a blended program that combines online research, mentorship, workshops, and campus visits to foster participants' identities as STEM researchers and members of the materials science and engineering community. The program also seeks to address the underrepresentation of certain BIPOC groups in U.S. engineering doctoral programs.

Implicit knowledge is know-how that an expert is usually unable to verbalize, codify, or explicitly transfer to others. Salazar-Gomez seeks to understand representations of tacit knowledge using overt and covert attention signatures in a mentor/apprentice setting. This study will use scene point-of-view videos, eye tracking, and detailed instructions from glassblowing experts to naïve learners to create instructional resources that will be offered as novel instructional material.

Minor notes addresses current gaps in K-12 literary arts education through a novel approach that combines archival research with collaborative art making. Bennett plans to meet with a cohort of high school seniors and their faculty advisors to explore local community archives and compose original works of art inspired by the historical materials they discover in those spaces.

Kennedy and Mueller aim to foster practical learning by engaging students in circular material economies through project-based research and demonstrations. The integrated curriculum will explore material circularity in architecture, empowering students to drive decarbonization and lead transformative changes in design and construction practices while utilizing innovative materials and reducing environmental impact.

The Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics’ Design, Build, Fly model aircraft curriculum aims to teach essential engineering concepts through model airplanes, catering to underserved and under-resourced students. By adapting the program for younger middle school students lacking certain mathematical skills, Karaman proposes to provide kits and materials for learning aerodynamics, designing, building, and testing, fostering STEM interest from an early age.

As part of its Brazilian Creative Learning Network program, MIT Media Lab’s Lifelong Kindergarten group plans to develop a set of resources and guides to deepen and broaden the reach of creative learning experiences through Festivals of Invention and Creativity in countries around the world. Valente and Burd will gather input and feedback during the development process from educators in Brazil, Chile, Mexico, South Africa, and other countries to iteratively refine the resources.

While the scarcity of medical equipment in much of Africa is recognized, little attention has been given to local biomedical engineers who aspire to be innovators and develop context-appropriate medical devices. Hanumara proposes to create a scalable innovation module framework designed for East African biomedical students, based on the course 2.75/2.750 (Medical Device Design).

Existing research into makerspaces mainly focuses on students' experiences, neglecting educators' perspectives. Mueller proposes that understanding educators' viewpoint scan guide the development of better educational tools and approaches, while studying diverse makerspaces across contexts can provide insights into effective practices.