STEM Summer Institute 2026

Valerie Otero, Professor of STEM Education at the University of Colorado Boulder and a specialist in Physics Education Research, will guide you through real classroom moments that reveal what happens when students truly take ownership of their learning. Explore how STEM can become a powerful vehicle for student voice—where learners build the confidence to advocate for themselves because of their experiences, not in spite of them. Through short video clips and reflections from both teachers and students, you will gain a renewed sense of possibility, enthusiasm, and optimism.

Generative AI is quickly becoming a practical classroom tool—not as a replacement for educators, but as a time-saving thought partner. This session focuses on how intentional prompting can help teachers work smarter, reduce administrative load, and reclaim time for instruction and student connection. Participants will learn how well-crafted prompts can support everyday tasks such as lesson planning, differentiating instruction, creating formative assessments, drafting feedback, and communicating with families—while maintaining professional judgment and instructional integrity.

Designed for educators at a beginner to developing level, this session emphasizes clarity, efficiency, and alignment to classroom goals rather than technical complexity. Attendees will explore prompt structures that produce usable, classroom-ready outputs and practice refining prompts to improve accuracy and relevance. The session will also address guardrails for responsible use, including data privacy, bias awareness, and when human expertise must remain central.

Participants will leave with practical prompt examples, a reusable prompting framework, and a clearer understanding of how generative AI can streamline workflows—allowing educators to focus their energy where it matters most: student learning.

This session explores mathematics as the foundational language that powers all STEM disciplines, with a strong emphasis on numeracy, mental math, and independent problem-solving. Participants will examine how gaps in basic arithmetic can limit student success in science, technology, and engineering, even when advanced tools are available. Drawing from the AI Math Club at Hardin High School, the session highlights practical strategies for strengthening foundational skills without reliance on apps or calculators.
The presentation also showcases how high school students can be developed as peer educators who both deepen their own understanding and provide meaningful academic support to younger learners. By treating mathematics as something students must understand, communicate, and teach, the program fosters confidence, leadership, and service.
Key takeaways include strategies for building numeracy, promoting independent thinking, and creating a sustainable culture where mathematics truly serves as the language of STEM.

Place-based environmental education projects for upper elementary students showing examples of how to weave together Next Generation Science Standards with the rich cultural heritage of Montana’s tribes through Indian Education for All initiatives. Beginning with an exploration of Yellowstone’s extremophiles, where students analyze energy flow and chemosynthesis while honoring the traditional stewardship and sacred connections of the Crow and Shoshone people to this unique landscape. Building on traditional native knowledge from a variety of environments, students learn how resources of the land were used for survival. The theme of environmental mastery travels through the biomes; tundra, prairie, desert, and deciduous forest, highlighting Indigenous engineering, investigations into pH natural chemistry, long-term observation to translate temperature data into a physical tapestry of environmental change and finally, the "Prairie’s Renewal" project demonstrating the intentional use of cultural burning by Plains tribes as a sophisticated tool for ecosystem management and nutrient cycling. Collectively, each project emphasizes that science is deeply embedded in the history of the land, encouraging students to develop a profound sense of stewardship by combining modern scientific inquiry with the enduring wisdom of Indigenous perspectives.

Looking for ways to integrate data science skills into your classroom but not sure where to start - or need new resources to add to your existing toolkit? In this hands-on session, educators will discover a curated selection of practical, classroom-ready resources designed to bring engaging data science experiences to K-12 students. We’ll introduce three distinct sets of tools and materials, each focused on fostering high-level data science skills such as critical thinking, data analysis, and ethical reasoning. These resources are intentionally designed to be adaptable across multiple subject areas, empowering teachers to seamlessly integrate data science into their existing curricula. Whether you teach math, science, social studies, or language arts, you’ll leave the session with actionable strategies and ready-to-use materials that you can implement in your classroom the very next day.

We will be introducing Makey Makey to teachers and exploring how they can help students build their own controllers with everyday materials like playdoh, coins, graphite pencils, even their own body! The kits will help students discover the difference between conductive and non-conductive materials, invent sensors, and use their imagination to control any computer program. This will deepen their knowledge of circuits and coding without having to learn a computer language. These kits provide a gateway for students with a proclivity for arts to incorporate electronics into their creative endeavors. Makey Makey bridges the gap between the physical world and your computer, allowing for hands-on creative tech projects.

This session explores how NotebookLM can serve as a reliable, teacher‑curated knowledge hub in STEM classrooms where students often struggle with attention during lectures and face increasing risks of misinformation from open‑ended AI tools. By consolidating vetted articles, datasets, and reference materials into a single notebook, teachers can limit unreliable sources while giving students a safe space to verify concepts and support their lab investigations. The approach reduces the need for heavy lecture and note‑taking, allowing more time for hands‑on, inquiry‑driven activities while ensuring students build understanding from accurate, intentional resources.

In this session, I will discuss the ways that I brought Ethnobotany into the middle school classroom. Through an immersion course, which is very simple to implement in any middle school science classroom, I intertwined culturally significant plants with bacterial research. In this session, we will discuss how we took traditionally sacred plants (sagebrush & yarrow) and tested them against bacterial growth. Students were able to participate in data collection to support traditional medicinal plant uses. In this session, I will discuss how this course can be implemented in any classroom setting. The plants used for this course had cultural significance to the Northern Cheyenne and Crow tribes, but can be adapted to any tribe in Montana. Main takeaways- allows students to connect culturally to their ancestors, easy implementation of ethnobotany, and meets IEFA standards.

Effective STEM-based lessons can start with natural math/science integration to discover more about the world around us. In this hands-on, inquiry-based workshop, participants will engage in innovative activities that illustrate the science and math behind real-world ecology concepts such as carrying capacity in nature, natural resource use, and how humans are forever changing Earth’s landscape, habitats and biodiversity. Presented strategies include creating representational mathematical models with manipulatives, cooperative group problem-solving challenges, graphing and analysis, and role-playing simulations. The presented activities build students' understanding and skills in algebraic patterns and functions, decimals, fractions and ratios, linear measurement, number operations, collaborative problem solving, and scientific inquiry. The activities incorporate data on trends in the environment, global demographics and natural resource use, and seek to enhance their data literacy and critical thinking skills related to data. Manipulatives are used to illustrate concepts for visual learners. Participants will receive lesson plans and background materials all matched to Montana K-12 Content Standards for several disciplines.

Students engaging in the scientific method requires authentic engagement, real collaboration, and rigorous debate about the data students have collected for themselves and for their team. This workshop will show teachers how to give their students the agency to practice science and assume responsibility for conducting it together. Whether contributing to existing theory or revolutionizing a paradigm, consensus-building is the necessary social skill that science demands of students. In this workshop, we will practice two consensus-building protocols that will shift the ownership of learning from you back to your students. You will walk away with a framework for lesson development that saves you time and energy, practical tools to help you implement this strategy within your existing curriculum, and a ready-to-use physics unit on waves. Make your students smarter, your workload smaller, and your instruction more effective than ever.

In this session, we will engage in a learner-centered approach to developing scientific principles through data. Participants will work together to build a model of a phenomenon that they observe through videos and experimental apparatus. We will conclude by looking at student data from their engagement in a similar activity. We will discuss how “pedagogical tools” can be used to facilitate knowledge construction in the classroom using science and engineering practices.

How can hands-on STEM experiences translate into sustained career pathways? This session highlights findings from MSUB's pilot Drone STEM Camps, immersive week-long programs serving middle and high school students. Participants built and soldered drones, learned flight operations and FAA safety fundamentals. In our second year, students will apply aerial imagery to authentic regional challenges, connecting engineering design and geospatial analysis to workforce-relevant problem solving. Evaluation data from the pilot indicate increases in student STEM interest, confidence with technical skills, and awareness of aerospace and advanced manufacturing careers. The session will share instructional strategies for integrating drone manufacturing, electrical soldering, flight, and spatial analysis into classroom or informal STEM settings. It will also outline how these camps are being intentionally aligned with Career and Technical Education (CTE) frameworks, community and tribal college pathways, and industry partnerships. Participants will leave with practical models for developing workforce-aligned STEM programming that strengthens career identity, builds technical skills, and connects students to emerging aerospace and geospatial opportunities in Montana and beyond.