Education & Outreach

A new CU Science Discovery program funded by the Office of Outreach and Engagement challenges CU Boulder undergraduates to design and create STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art and Math) kits for children being treated at Children's Hospital Colorado.

Middler-schoolers from Casa de la Esperanza, a housing community for agricultural workers and families, are learning about space and how to build rockets alongside CU students and scientists. Not only that, they're setting themselves up to be the first in their families to pursue higher education.

No summer slowdown exists for the Office of Diversity, Equity, and Community Engagement (ODECE). In partnership with academic departments across campus, ODECE hosts more than 1,500 middle and high school students, and soon-to-be freshmen in a variety of summer pre-collegiate programming.

Diego Fierro, 13, hopes to be a mechanical engineer someday. And thanks to a LEGO Robotics: Space Challenge camp at the University of Colorado Boulder, Diego took one step closer to that dream this week. “I’ve never built anything with LEGO Mindstorms before,” Diego explained, as he programmed the robot’s next move. “It’s cool because it gives me an idea of how a machine works, how every piece is important and has a job.”

After five years and the hard work of nearly 200 students, faculty and community members, Geometry Point at Romero Park in Lafayette is now open. Filled with colorful geometric shapes, math equations and artful displays of arithmetic, the park was designed to make math fun.

For Professor Sarah Krakoff and students from CU-Boulder, spring marks a transition from the halls of the Wolf Law Building to the fields of the San Luis Valley. Since 2012, Krakoff and her law students have regularly trekked to one of the largest high altitude deserts in the world, where they clear debris from irrigation ditches or acequias and provide free legal assistance to farmers whose water rights are in question.

According to the 2013 census, one in four Americans does not have internet access at home, and those with the lowest median income rates are most affected. The digital divide problem in Lafayette puts low-income students at a disadvantage, a reality that hit close to home for Balkarn (Kern) Shahi, who grew up in Lafayette and attended local public schools.

CU Boulder Mechanical Engineering Associate Professor Michael Hannigan conducts air quality research with Delta and Weld County high schoolers.

Two first graders walk into a class. They open a science book they wrote together. They read it to college students, who clap and ask questions. This is no joke. It’s a joint effort of a writing class at CU-Boulder and a first-grade class at Bear Creek Elementary School.

A new, sweeping national study of educational research use among school and district leaders finds generally positive attitudes toward the value of research and frequent use of research for decision-making. The report was published by the National Center for Research in Policy and Practice (NCRPP), which is funded by Institute of Education Sciences at the U.S. Department of Education and housed at the University of Colorado Boulder School of Education.