Tamara Sumner

Tamara Sumner, ICS Director, Talks AI and Its Role in Schools in The Economist Article, "Will artifical intelligence transform school?"

Anonymous — Sun, 07 Jul 2024 13:51:36 +0000

Tamara Sumner, ICS Director, Talks AI and Its Role in Schools in The Economist Article, "Will artifical intelligence transform school?" Anonymous (not verified) Sun, 07/07/2024 - 07:51

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Tamara Sumner Named to Interdisciplinary Teaching, Research and Creative Work Committee

Anonymous — Thu, 28 Feb 2019 07:00:00 +0000

Tamara Sumner Named to Interdisciplinary Teaching, Research and Creative Work Committee Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 02/28/2019 - 00:00

Director of Institute of Cognitive Science and Professor of Computer and Cognitive Science will serve a College of Arts and Sciences committee exploring the need for interdisciplinary education and scholarship.

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National Academy of Sciences Report Features Give High Praise to Inquiry Hub Research and Curricula

Anonymous — Sat, 17 Nov 2018 07:00:00 +0000

National Academy of Sciences Report Features Give High Praise to Inquiry Hub Research and Curricula Anonymous (not verified) Sat, 11/17/2018 - 00:00

The National Academies of Sciences Engineering Medicine has published the report "Science and Engineering for Grades 6 - 12: Investigation and Design at the Center (2018)" which includes multiple mentions of the Institute of Cognitive Science research program, Inquiry Hub.

Chapter 4: "How Students Engage with Investigation and Design" prominently features the work of Profs. Tamara Sumner, Jennifer Jacobs, William Penuel, and Katie Van Horne's Inquiry Hub research program. Inquiry Hub's Biology course curriculum's Evolution unit was presented as the primary example of how to integrate three-dimensional science and engineering performances for student engagement.

According to a NAS press release,"Centering science instruction around investigation and design can improve learning in middle and high schools and help students make sense of phenomena in the world around them. Current approaches to science in many classrooms do not reflect this approach and constrain the opportunities afforded to students, says a new report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. Changing instructional approaches will require significant and sustained work by teachers, administrators, and policy makers, the report says.

“Students learn by doing, and science investigations provide an opportunity to do,” says Brett Moulding, co-chair of the committee that wrote the report and director of the Partnership for Effective Science Teaching and Learning. “Our report provides guidance on how teaching can shift toward investigations in a way that piques students’ curiosity and leads to greater interest in science.”

Inquiry Hub Research + Practice Partnership began in 2008 as a joint research venture between Denver Public Schools and the �鶹ӰԺ. The mission of this partnership is to design, test, and implement tools and strategies for supporting all teachers in developing rigorous and responsive instruction that can help all students achieve at high levels in mathematics and science.

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2 New Inquiry Hub Grants Support Deeper Learning and Equity in STEM

Anonymous — Fri, 23 Mar 2018 06:00:00 +0000

2 New Inquiry Hub Grants Support Deeper Learning and Equity in STEM Anonymous (not verified) Fri, 03/23/2018 - 00:00

In an effort to promote equity in mathematics and science education, two foundations have awarded funding to the �鶹ӰԺ and its partners to enhance research in deeper learning among students.

The William & Flora Hewlett Foundation $1 million grant supports the Inquiry Hub’s work in encouraging deeper learning in students by giving support to teachers to engage in culturally relevant, phenomenon-based science teaching. Northwestern University, the Tidemark Institute and now Project VOYCEhave joined as partners in this project.

The Spencer Foundation grant of $399,960 supports the Inquiry Hub’s work in improving curriculum coherence and creating tools in which teachers can measure their success.

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CU REACH Academic Futures White Paper

Anonymous — Thu, 30 Nov 2017 19:25:19 +0000

CU REACH Academic Futures White Paper Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 11/30/2017 - 12:25

CU REACH: Expanding Research and Education on Cannabinoids and Health

Cinnamon Bidwell, Assistant Research Professor, Institute of Cognitive Science

Monika Fleshner, Professor, Integrative Physiology and the Center for Neuroscience

Nolan Kane, Assistant Professor, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology

Brian Keegan, Assistant Professor, Information Science

John Hewitt, Professor, Director, Institute of Behavioral Genetics

Kent Hutchison, Professor, Psychology and Neuroscience

Robert Sievers, Professor, Director, Environmental Program

Tamara Sumner, Professor, Director, Institute of Cognitive Science

Daniela Vergara, Post-doctoral Associate, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology

Linda Watkins, Professor, Psychology and Neuroscience

November 28, 2017

This month marks the 5^th anniversary of the passage of Amendment 64 in 2012 to amend the Constitution of the State of Colorado to include a statewide policy addressing the personal use of Cannabis, as well as commercial cultivation, manufacture, and sale. The Economist described this as “an electoral first not only for America but for the world.” Since then, the United States and the global community have witnessed enormous changes concerning the acceptance of Cannabis use. Nearly two-thirds of the United States population (63%), in 28 states, has access to state-regulated Cannabis markets, either medicinal or recreational. We are also witnessing rapid changes around the globe: Canada is poised to legalize access to recreational Cannabis; Mexico, Colombia, Belize, and Poland recently legalized medicinal use; and Germany is in the early stages of legalization. These widespread social, political, and policy changes are having enormous impacts on every facet of our lives, from the economy, to criminal justice, to drug policy, and health.

Despite the scope and pace of these societal changes, there is a huge gap in scientific knowledge regarding the health effects of Cannabis. The �鶹ӰԺ, by virtue of the depth and breadth of our research capacity and our location as the flagship university in the state that is at the forefront of Cannabis policy, is uniquely poised to provide Colorado and the nation with research leadership in this critical area. Towards this end, we are building a multi-disciplinary center involving faculty and researchers from across campus to radically expand our capacity for Research, Education, and Application in Cannabinoids and Health (CU REACH). Our community currently conducts research in four mutually-supporting areas: Cannabis plant genomics and chemical analyses, biomedical pre-clinical and clinical research, risk reduction, and information science. In the past year, the CU-�鶹ӰԺ research community has received almost $15 million in federal (NIH) and Colorado state funding for groundbreaking research in these areas, and there are an additional $12 million in grants currently under review. The State of Colorado continues to lead the world in Cannabis policy by using some of its approximately $200 million in annual tax revenues to fund scientific research on the health effects of Cannabis. Last year, 6 of the 7 marijuana research awards made by the state went to researchers in the University of Colorado system. While we are proud of our successes to date, this research needs to be rapidly and dramatically scaled to address critical public health challenges facing our nation. In this white paper, we briefly outline this national need, and describe a set of challenges that must be addressed in order to scale this important research and ensure that it informs public policy. We believe that these challenges can be creatively addressed by bringing various parties from across campus together to co-develop innovative approaches and solutions.

Our National Need. Here we focus on two major issues: 1) the need for strong evidence to inform policy and 2) the potential of cannabinoids to treat or moderate mood (anxiety/depression/stress), pain and sleep disturbances.

The scientific literature is completely inadequate and uninformative with respect to public policy, public health, and personal decisions regarding the potential benefits and risks of Cannabis. State leaders are formulating policy in areas where there is little to no strong scientific evidence, relying on studies with low internal validity (small or idiosyncratic study populations), low external validity (using cannabinoid strains and potencies not reflective of consumer products), and findings that have not been replicated outside of pilot studies. Consumers are also suffering as a result of this lack of scientific knowledge, with commercial interests promoting health and wellness products for which there is little to no scientific evidence for their effectiveness.

In 2016, the National Academy of Sciences Institute of Medicine produced a new report on the effects of Cannabis on public health outcomes and highlighted the critical need for more high quality research and for the removal of barriers at the national and state levels that hinder strong research designs. This month, the American Legion, representing our nation’s veterans, called for expanded medical Cannabis research and asked the Department of Veterans Affairs to clear roadblocks to clinical studies involving veterans. These regulatory barriers are significant and need to be streamlined; however, even within these barriers, our CU community is pioneering new research methodologies that improve scientific rigor while adhering to federal guidelines, including the use of a mobile pharmacology laboratory.

In October, President Trump declared opioid addiction to be a national public health emergency and called for research into substances that are not habit forming but alleviate pain. In their 2016 report, the National Academy of Sciences Institute of Medicine stated that pain is one of three areas for which there is strong evidence for the therapeutic effects of Cannabis, the other two being chemotherapy-induced nausea and multiple sclerosis spasticity. Chronic pain is one of the most widespread ailments afflicting Americans and a strong driver of opioid use. Veterans often suffer from pain related to injuries sustained during service or post-traumatic stress disorder, and are seeking alternatives to highly addictive, opioid-based “zombie drugs”. The American Legion published a survey this month reporting that an overwhelming 92% of veterans and veterans caregivers support expanding research into medical Cannabis. This stance is not surprising given that much of the research examining the potential of Cannabis to relieve pain involves CBD, a cannabinoid that is neither psychoactive nor habit-forming. Relief from pain is also the most commonly cited reason for medicinal Cannabis use, with improving anxiety/mood and sleep falling in at second and third. While there is a growing consensus about the promise of cannabinoids for treating pain, there is still much that is not known, including what kinds and doses of cannabinoids are most effective (there are over 600 known plant constituents), how different cannabinoids function during pain relief, how best to administer treatments, timing of treatments, and what works for whom and under what conditions. Our research community at CU �鶹ӰԺ is well-positioned to contribute to this body of knowledge due to our deep expertise in pain research, in both humans and animals, and our strong commitment to developing and investigating a variety of non-opioid treatments including cognitive and behavioral approaches, mindfulness, meditation, and education.

Scaling Our Research and Impact. Based on our experiences conducting research in this nascent area of cannabinoids and health, we have identified five avenues forward for scaling our research and addressing societal needs:

Expanded ability for investigators to access pilot funding and to raise and accept funding for Cannabis research. It is extremely difficult to receive large NIH grants without strong pilot study results. CU Investigators currently face a highly restrictive funding environment, making it difficult to conduct the pilot studies necessary for launching larger Cannabis research efforts. The university restricts investigators from accepting funds from any group associated with the marijuana industry. These restrictions go too far, limiting even basic fund raising efforts in this area for animal research. For example, Drs. Watkins and Fleshner have well-developed animal models to study the effects of cannabinoids on pain, inflammation, and the stress response. Pilot data could easily be leveraged into funding from NIH and this research could have an enormous impact on the national level. Similarly, Drs. Bidwell and Hutchison have leveraged a mobile laboratory design to conduct observational Cannabis and pain research, a research program that could be greatly expanded through funding an additional mobile laboratory. While a number of organizations would like to support this research with funding, current policy makes this very difficult. While the university has previously taken a conservative position, it is time to re-evaluate and relax prohibitions on funding, based on a clear distinction between funding from organizations that are pursuing medical indications (e.g., reducing opiate use) and organizations that produce products clearly for recreational use. There is some legal and political precedent for this approach: Congress has prohibited the U.S. Department of Justice from using funds to target the medical Cannabis industry.
Expanded ability to transfer and acquire Cannabis and hemp material from non-federal sources. Current restrictions do not allow CU researchers to touch or examine non-federally sourced Cannabis. Thus, adults in our state can legally access Cannabis for personal use, but our state’s top biologists, chemists, neuroscientists, and psychologists cannot examine the effects of these products nor test them for safety in an academic research environment. For example, should these restrictions be lifted, animal researchers at CU could study the effects of high potency concentrates on the brain and development. Instead, we have no research data on this question and concentrates continue to be legally sold and accessed in our state. CU legal counsel has in the past cited a risk that the federal government might punish CU for such research by taking away federal funds. However, the state of Colorado, which receives about $7 billion in federal funds annually, does not share this concern nor has there been any example of the federal government punishing Colorado or any other state with a regulated market. For example, state employees in Colorado’s Marijuana Enforcement Division engage with the industry to inspect grow operations and products on a regular basis. Furthermore, Governor Hickenlooper signed a state law in 2016 that allows medical marijuana in Colorado schools (several state districts including Falcon School District 49 have adopted this policy). Thus, staff and students at secondary schools in Colorado are allowed to have Cannabis products on campus, yet scientists from the state’s flagship university are not. Although the CO House Bill 17-1367 opens the door to institutes of higher education to perform Cannabis research under the licensing guidelines outlined in the bill, there is no University policy that permits this research on the CU �鶹ӰԺ campus without a Schedule I DEA license. Further, absent of any precedent in which the federal government has taken a punitive action against a state organization that regulates Cannabis, or action against a school system that allows Cannabis on its campus, it is now an appropriate time for the CU legal counsel to develop a simple and clear approach for enabling innovative research that is critically needed from a public health and safety perspective.
Ability to independently test non-federally sourced Cannabis products on campus. Consistent with the above, scientific rigor, feasibility, and independence will be significantly strengthened by allowing researchers to handle non-federally sourced Cannabis for the purposes of independently testing plant material for use in observational and laboratory studies. The best case scenario would be to allow direct testing of plant material on campus, in order to conduct basic research and/or verify cannabinoid levels and other content in the plant material.
Broad spectrum and effective science communication across multiple audiences. By formalizing and embracing Cannabis research through structured colloquium and CU supported communication efforts, CU can pave the way in differentiating Cannabis science from the Cannabis anecdotal hearsay. Clearly communicating the strengths and limitations of the current evidence-base will provide an important public service. Funding to convene academic conferences and workshops, creating infrastructure to support interdisciplinary research, and publicizing research findings will make CU �鶹ӰԺ a leader in science communication for Cannabis.
Building collaborations between industry and academia. Colorado is home to a thriving medical Cannabis industry with multiple start-up incubators, active investors, popular Meetup groups, and professional associations. The medical cannabis industry is actively hiring across a variety of career paths including business strategy and marketing, data analytics and software development, and research and development in biology, chemistry, and agri-tech. Much as Stanford and UC Berkeley have cemented a thriving innovation culture in Silicon Valley and Harvard and MIT did with Route 128, CU �鶹ӰԺ could be poised to anchor a rapidly growing multi-billion dollar industry by building stronger relationships through technology transfer, internships, and industry R&D collaborations.

What are we waiting for? It is time to move beyond our fears and prejudices and conduct the critical research that our country needs. In September of this year, the New York Times reported that “drug overdoses killed roughly 64,000 people in the United States last year”, with the number of deaths attributed to Fentanyl increasing by 540% in just three years. Drug overdoses, particularly those related to the use of synthetic opioids such as fentanyl, are expected to remain the leading cause of death for Americans under 50. Less harmful alternatives to alleviate this suffering and its toll on families are desperately needed now. Furthermore, strong scientific research on the medical and societal impacts of Cannabis can, and should, inform the design of equitable social policies. In a joint report released in 2016, the American Civil Liberties Union and Human Rights Watch note that Cannabis possession is increasingly a civil liberties issue, with black adults being more than four times as likely to be arrested for Cannabis possession than white adults, even though usage rates are comparable.

The �鶹ӰԺ has a unique opportunity to become the leading Cannabis research institution in the United States and to address this enormous public need by reconsidering current barriers to Cannabis research on campus. However, despite being the first state to legalize, our window of competitive advantage is rapidly closing, as other states adopt similar legislation. Future health and policy decisions concerning Cannabis need to be based on rigorous scientific data. With these barriers reduced or removed, CU researchers across departments could start providing data today that would directly inform the public and policy makers regarding potential medical uses as well as approaches to reducing the potential risks associated with Cannabis use, and, by doing so, provide innumerable benefits to the University, the state of Colorado, and the nation’s public.

CU REACH: Expanding Research and Education on Cannabinoids and Health - CU �鶹ӰԺ is building a multi-disciplinary center involving faculty and researchers from across campus to radically expand our capacity for Research, Education, and Application in Cannabinoids and Health (CU REACH).

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Academic Futures: Interdisciplinary Graduate Education

Anonymous — Tue, 17 Oct 2017 17:19:59 +0000

Academic Futures: Interdisciplinary Graduate Education Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 10/17/2017 - 11:19

Academic Futures: Interdisciplinary Graduate Education

Tamara Sumner, Institute of Cognitive Science

Donna Caccamise, Institute of Cognitive Science

Alan Townsend, INSTAAR

October 10, 2017

Innovation and invention increasingly take place at the boundaries of disciplines. Nobel laureate Richard Thaler described his groundbreaking research as filling the void between conventional economics and psychology during a recent interview with the PBS Newshour. In the same week, CU’s College of Engineering and Applied Sciences announced the winners of “the college’s first set of Interdisciplinary Research Themes”, whose aim is to help the college and the university "Accelerate Our Research Impact". Earlier this year, the National Science Foundation identified “growing convergence research” as one of its top priorities for the coming decade. In the Foundation’s words, “convergence can be characterized as the deep integration of knowledge, techniques, and expertise from multiple fields to form new and expanded frameworks for addressing scientific and societal challenges and opportunities.”

A critical question facing our university and our nation is how to prepare the next generation of scientists to excel in convergence research? Our university is well-situated to develop exciting and effective new educational models, building on the experiences and lessons learned across our research Institutes and affiliated departments who have pioneered interdisciplinary degrees, certificates, and graduate experiences over the past decade. In this white paper, we outline six of the key attributes that an effective educational model should include. Conceptually, these attributes embody shifting from a department-centered model of graduate education to a student-centered model, where the locus of decision-making resides with a student’s dissertation committee.

1. Flexible admissions into an area

By definition, cutting edge interdisciplinary research is not neatly encompassed by a single discipline. The current practice of requiring outstanding graduate students to be admitted by a single, disciplinary department constrains the selection of potential candidates from the outset. Ideally, candidates could be admitted into an area, broadly defined as a community of cooperating units. To provide a concrete example, consider the case of Patricia, an incoming graduate student who is interested in developing computational models of language learning in early childhood. Her research interests lie at the intersections of linguistics, psychology and computer science. Potential dissertation committee members and relevant coursework are distributed across these three departments. Patricia’s choice of research area is potentially profoundly consequential: we know that there are vast individual differences in language learning in early childhood, particularly across children from different socioeconomics status, which deeply influences their readiness for learning and success in school. Yet under the current structure, her options for both admission and the evolution of her research interests are constrained.

2. Multidisciplinary dissertation contributions and committees

The gold standard for PhD research is to make a significant and original contributions to knowledge. Interdisciplinary research requires students to deeply integrate “knowledge, techniques, and expertise from multiple fields.” In order to do so, students will need high quality mentoring from committee members across multiple departments and units. This multi-membership will need to go far beyond the current practice of having a single “outside” member. In Patricia’s case, her ideal dissertation committee might include a psychologist specializing in infant development, a psychologist specializing in the cognitive neuroscience of language learning, a linguist expert in computational models of language acquisition, a computer scientist expert in cognitive modeling using machine learning, and a computer scientist expert in network modeling. Furthermore, since much of our exciting and innovative interdisciplinary research is taking place within our Institutes, we need to expand these mentoring and dissertation committee networks to include our extremely talented research faculty, many of whom want to supervise graduate students but are often prevented from doing so by departmental policies.

3. Personalized coursework, including breadth requirements

Ideally, Patricia’s committee could work with her to identify relevant and rigorous coursework spanning psychology, linguistics, and computer science that will provide Patricia with both broad and deep preparation in theory, research methods, and related ideas. While Institutes such as ICS have developed certificates, Joint PhDs, and even Triple PhDs, that promote and enable this type of deeply interdisciplinary coursework, they are all based on the model that interdisciplinary coursework is in addition to the required disciplinary coursework. This necessarily results in an over-crediting model, where students are required to take far more coursework than a conventional PhD. Within undergraduate education, there is general acceptance of the need to reduce over-crediting approaches as they greatly increase the cost and length of schooling, and the potential for student attrition. An effective model would recognize that the definition of breadth and depth of coursework will need to be individualized to the particular student’s research goals, and that the dissertation committee is well-placed to guide these decisions. This challenges our current notions of “breadth” which are based on the assumption of developing a broad base of skills within a single discipline.

4. Strong research methods training

To ensure that our interdisciplinary graduate students are producing outstanding research contributions, we will need to provide them with strong training in research methods tailored to their specific research goals. In Patricia’s case, she will need to develop deep skills in two very different research methods: cutting edge computational modeling techniques that build on the latest advances in machine learning and network science, and the design and conduct of experiments involving human subjects (children in her case). Currently, these methods courses span different departments and Patricia may not be able to enroll in necessary courses as some are limited to majors only in an effort to keep course sizes manageable. A pedagogic challenge will be facilitating knowledge transfer. Even if Patricia is able to enroll in the network science course, for example, she may need additional assistance understanding how to apply these algorithms and approaches to her novel research area.

5. Explicit training in leadership, communication, management & innovation

Future graduates need explicit training to participate in, and lead, multidisciplinary teams where members differ both in disciplinary expertise and personal diversity (e.g., gender, race, ethnicity, etc.). Continued progress in both academic and industrial innovation requires new approaches to problem-solving, including incorporating diverse perspectives as part of team-based approaches that bring together experts from a variety of disciplines to solve problems that cross disciplinary boundaries. As problems become more complex, there are often a range of possible solutions, each with advantages and disadvantages. In this case, skills from several disciplines are needed, and a diverse group is more likely to generate a wider range of possible approaches and more likely to find a robust solution. The concept of T-shaped professionals describes individuals who are trained for interdisciplinary work. They balance the deep skills needed in a single, or aspects of multiple disciplines (the vertical part of the T) with the broad skills needed to succeed in working in teams and across discipline boundaries (the horizontal bar of the T). Importantly, these skills, taught to majority and minority students, focus on project goals and processes, and also provide the basis to support diversity in our student populations. This educational strategy provides skills to participants that will enable them to work effectively in diverse groups, as well as providing a basis for long-term, persistent, structural changes that will lead to a less biased work team environment over time. Such training, along with training in effective communication skills, principles of innovation and entrepreneurship, and management more broadly, will help students succeed in an evolving academic landscape and enhance their employment options beyond academia following completion of their degrees. Attention to this changing job landscape for graduate students is an essential requirement of top graduate programs.

6. Incentives and revenue to support participation, improvement, and scaling

As with any new initiative, considerable and creative thought is needed to generate appropriate revenue streams to support student recruitment, program implementation, continuous improvements, and scaling. We have already seen that in many areas, the best interdisciplinary programs often “out recruit us” because they are able to provide better support for the best students. We will also need to attend to equity: students across a broad range of intellectual areas should be able to participate, irrespective of their funding source (e.g., GRA or TA positions). Furthermore, faculty should be encouraged and rewarded for serving on interdisciplinary committees, and this service should be valued equally with serving on disciplinary committees from their home departments. Finally, revenue models for tuition return will need to be adjusted. Faculty and departments that enable students pursuing interdisciplinary degrees to enroll in their courses will need to be rewarded and appropriately compensated. Likewise, units offering interdisciplinary degrees, certificates, and courses will also need to be rewarded and compensated for providing these services, irrespective of the home department or unit of participating students.

ICS Director and Associate Director, Tammy Sumner and Donna Caccamise contribute to Academic Futures discussions by working across Institutes with the new director of INSTAAR, lan Townsend. Please see their white paper below.

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CU �鶹ӰԺ Researchers Win Recognition in Effort to Prepare the Next Generation of Scientists

Anonymous — Wed, 28 Jun 2017 19:29:07 +0000

CU �鶹ӰԺ Researchers Win Recognition in Effort to Prepare the Next Generation of Scientists Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 06/28/2017 - 13:29

“How or why did this happen?”

This is the question CU researchers want budding high school scientists to be asking. Rather than lecturing to students, a partnership at CU is creating a new way of teaching science concepts that prepares young scientists to tackle the problems of our 21^st century world.

For nearly 10 years, the Inquiry Hub, or iHub, has been developing and testing a new model for helping school districts effectively implement student-centered curricula in mathematics and science. Their latest digital unit in biology, “Why Don't Antibiotics Work Like They Used To?,“ was recently recognized by Achieve, Inc., a nonprofit education organization that helped to develop the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS).

The curriculum was awarded the highest quality rating given to date to NGSS-aligned curricula, an “image of the possible” for 21^st century science teaching. Reviewers noted that it was “ambitious, comprehensive, and purposefully designed. Students are repeatedly challenged with rigorous content and expected to make important connections between and across storylines. Students also are exposed to and engage in authentic scientific research.” The unit will be released to schools and districts in the coming years for adoption into their curriculums.

To design and test the curriculum, iHub partnered with Denver Public Schools and Northwestern University to coordinate with high school teachers and teacher educators in Colorado, Michigan, and Illinois. After collaborating on the design, biology teachers took the lessons back to their students for “stress testing.” The teachers brought back their insights into what did and did not work about the lessons, and researchers used the data to further improve the unit.

The unit design revolves around a new “storylining process,” where a single storyline ties together different lessons to help students solidify connections between ideas. Using a narrative to learn about the natural phenomena of antibiotic resistance helps high school students understand the broader functions of evolution.

To support the NGSS standards, the unit incorporates a student design challenge and local community engagement. For example, this spring during pilot testing of the curriculum by Denver Public Schools, students in 22 local high school biology classes took part in a design challenge to create infographics that warned and informed the public about the increased prevalence of antibiotic-resistant bacteria. The students’ colorful infographics were later meant to be displayed in health clinics to help patients understand the science behind antibiotic-resistant bacteria and how they can change their behaviors to prevent the problem.

The long-standing Inquiry Hub project is funded through the National Science Foundation and the Moore Foundation. The partnership joins researchers from CU’s Institute of Cognitive Science (ICS) and School of Education with Denver Public Schools (DPS) and the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR). ICS's Dr. Tamara Sumner is the Principal Investigator and the School of Education's Dr. Bill Penuel is Co-Principal Investigator.

A partnership at CU is creating a new way of teaching science concepts that prepares young scientists to tackle the problems of our 21st century world.

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