Organizers of Expanding Your Horizons are looking for University of Kentucky students who are interested in being workshop leaders for the 2019 conference. Expanding Your Horizons is a one-day conference on April 20, 2019, for middle school girls from across Kentucky. The purpose is to expose them to the STEM fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics by taking part in hands-on science workshops.
STEMCats, sponsored by HHMI, is designed to help students succeed at UK. The program prepares students both academically and socially through participation in FastTrack or FOCUS, research opportunities, and special seminar courses. Students participating in STEMCats will build confidence, enthusiasm, satisfaction and a sense of belonging to UK, and experience a smoother transition to college coursework. This leads to improved performance and higher academic achievement.
The beginning of the new year marks a celebration of mentoring at the National Science Foundation through the recognition of mentors via PAESMEM: the Presidential Award for Excellence in Science, Mathematics, & Engineering Mentoring. A recent article published by the National Science Foundation featured PAESMEM alumni, including Chemistry Professor D. Allan Butterfield, on the subject of what makes a good mentor and why mentoring matters.
Teaching science is one thing, experiencing it is another. Through a unique program, Kentucky science, technology, engineering and mathematics teachers spent this past summer experiencing the subjects firsthand on the University of Kentucky campus through the STEM PRIDE program.
The University of Kentucky Department of STEM Education, under the direction of Molly Fisher (PI), associate professor and director of graduate studies, and Jennifer Wilhelm (co-PI), professor and chair,
Sung S. Ambrose Seo, assistant professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Kentucky, has received the prestigious five-year National Science Foundation (NSF) Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) award totaling $672,981.
While STEMCats may be one of the newest Living Learning Communities on campus, it is providing incoming students with many unique opportunities. Students are not only able to live on campus and take courses with like-minded peers, but STEMCats also allows incoming freshmen students to participate in research and connect with peers, upperclassmen, and professors. In this podcast, we talk with several Undergraduate Instructional Assistants, or UIA’s, who have been building connections with STEMCats freshmen through sharing their experiences.
