A team of ORAU employees recently presented at the 2024 White House Summit on STEMM Equity and Excellence. The summit was co-hosted by the STEMM Opportunity Alliance and the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. The purpose of the summit was to announce a national strategy to help 20 million people from historically excluded and marginalized communities enter, contribute to, and thrive in Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics and Medical (STEMM) fields.
STEM teachers from Kindergarten through high school, and others interested in the STEM fields, can choose from a number of professional development opportunities provided by ORAU. These summer workshops for teachers are ideal for strengthening lesson plans, learning new tips for student engagement, as well as learning about new technologies for K-12 classrooms.
Understanding how plants use water resources and how they're responding to changes in climate and the resulting feedbacks on the climate system is important, and challenging. Zoe Pierrat, Ph.D., a NASA Postdoctoral Fellow at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, says that while there are great models for some aspects of climate and climate change, plants adapt to the changes in their environment making understanding their impact more uncertain. Host Michael Holtz talks to Pierrat about all aspects of her NPP Fellowship, including how she got interested in science, how the NASA NPP has impacted her life and career, the value of mentorship and collaboration, and how being a curious rugrat started everything! To learn more about the NASA NPP program, visit https://npp.orau.org/index.html.
