Nexus teamed up with the CMI Education, Training and Outreach (ETO) team, NREL STEM education center, Colorado School of Mines’ Admissions team and the Mines Earth Sciences Museum on Saturday, August 27th in the CoorsTek building on the campus of the Colo
rado School of Mines, to deliver the Rocky Mountain Math Engineering Science Achievement (RM MESA) Fall Kick-Off workshop for Colorado teachers and graduate student mentors. Over 36 educators and Mines’ graduate student RM MESA volunteers spent their Saturday preparing for STEM outreach for the 2022-23 school year.
Dr. Cynthia Howell welcomed the eager workshop attendees representing Mines and various schools from throughout the state of Colorado. She Highlighted the Partners (the Mines/NREL Nexus, CMI, Mines Admissions, Mines Museum of Earth Science) coming together to make this event possible and introduced the delivery team. CMI’s Dr. Danielle Ladd presented outreach information throughout the day which included her CMI developed lessons and patented “invention education” curriculum by MESA USA. CMI’s past graduate research associate, Yamah Nabiyar joined Chemistry Professor Dr. Christian Beren, and Nexus project manager, Kelly Hummel, in supporting the group with valuable inputs, taking photos and program organization.
The workshop attendees rounded out the day with a Mines Museum of Earth Science Reception of Teacher Resources tour and keynote
speaker, Dr. Craig Brice, the current director of Mines’ Additive Manufacturing Program. Dr. Brice presented his work, Engineering a Super Hero, about his work designing and building a working Iron Man suit for the Discovery Channel TV show, Savage Builds.
CMI’s new museum
docent and exhibit guide, Mines’ Geology undergraduate, Dorian Gursky, prepared the CMI outreach table featuring our Materials Science Outreach Tool Kit and provided a museum exhibit tour. The Nexus table hosted information about teacher and student workshops, NREL resources and programs for teachers and students, data on Nexus and reports from Mines and NREL on diversity, inclusion and accessibility.
At day’s end it was clear, Mines educational leadership will be an active part of the success of each school’s MESA outreach this year!