STEM Rooted in Culture:Collaborative, Sustained, and Empowering Community Partnerships

ID: WMA2026_594

Track:

The Natural History Museum of Utah’s STEM Rooted in Culture (SRIC) educator workshop series brings together community experts and museum educators. Together we help educators broaden understanding and diversify teaching practices in the K-12 social studies and STEM classroom.

Participants in this half-day workshop will experience past workshop highlights first-hand. NHMU and our partners will share our efforts to elevate Indigenous knowledge, cultivate sustained and meaningful community partnerships, and increase equity and access for students.

Session Information

Format: Half-day workshop (9:00 a.m. – 1:00 p.m.)

Uniqueness: SRIC elevates cultural knowledge, history, and practices, blending these with STEM standards to better serve educators and students. Participants will experience hands-on activities from workshops.

Objectives: Objective: Demonstrate how organizations can lead by cultivating meaningful and sustained relationships with community partners, and how such partnerships can better represent and serve our diverse communities.   Objective: Share effective methods for elevating Indigenous and cultural knowledge in the realm of STEM education and show how these methods improve representation and access for all learners.   Objective: Model curriculum devoted to culturally rooted, hands-on STEM programming grounded in the understanding that Indigenous knowledge is science.

Engagement: Attendees will experience past workshop highlights as full participants. Workshops include information sharing, hands-on activities, group work, and discussion. Activities include: weaving and Mayan cosmology paired with European textiles at the advent of the Industrial Revolution as the precursor to today’s binary code; traditional Cambodian music and dance and the symbology within them partnered with wave patterns and the science of sound; Pacific Islander sailing practices and wayfinding in conjunction with geometry.

Relationship to Theme:

Audience

Audiences: Other 

Professional Level: All levels 

Scalability: Institutions of all sizes can apply SRIC’s approach to community partnership and educational programming at a scale suitable to them. Both small and large institutions are represented by the presenters.

Participants