Halverson Awarded $1.1 Million from the National Science Foundation

October 17, 2017

Erica Halverson and co-investigators from Northcentral Technical College have been awarded a grant of $1.1 million from the National Science Foundation to design, deliver and study mobile maker experiences for people in rural communities in central Wisconsin. The project involves high school students serving as mentors for the mobile making experiences and measuring the impact of these experiences on participants and mentors. “We hope that these experiences will result in increased interest in computer technology and engineering careers, critical occupations across numerous industries,” Halverson said.

Halverson also is collaborating with the Science Museum of Minnesota, six community-based organizations, three K-12 school districts, as well as the Wausau–based technical college, on the project, EI: Making + Mentoring: Integrating Computational Thinking into Informal 6-12 STEM Education, through July 2020. “This is an exciting opportunity for two institutions of higher education in Wisconsin that don’t typically collaborate to think deeply about how maker pedagogy can impact the lives of rural communities that have historically been left out of progressive pedagogy conversations,” Halverson said.