STEM Summer Institute 2026

Join us for a walkthrough of Code Girls United’s AI Academy, a free AI resource built for classrooms and afterschool programs. Designed to be practical and accessible, our AI Academy includes explainer videos, structured lessons, and hands-on activities that help middle and high school students develop AI literacy, critical thinking, and responsible technology use

This presentation details the application of the Rapid Forest Assessment protocol for systematically collecting and analyzing ecological data in a forest landscape. Participants will learn how to implement RFA as a citizen science collaboration with local public land managers. Data collected and organized by students can provide land managers with a clear, science-based assessment to evaluate the success of fire as a management tool, track ecosystem health, and make informed decisions for future landscape resilience. Participants will also learn about other STEM resources related to citizen science and the SMART FIRES project (Sensors, Machine Learning , and Artificial Intelligence for Real-Time Fire Science). Attendees will have the chance to win one of two Rapid Forest Assessment kits to take home with them.

The audience will be shown previous presentations, given the purpose of the project, and allowed to create their own presentations for a particular Montana Indigenous group. The topics will be summer versus winter hunting grounds, the distance determined between the two, and the finding of the midpoint of the journey using the Desmos geometry tool. Then the audience will determine the size of the cache pot needed to store the supplies of the tribe for a winter season. Both the midpoint determination and the size of the cache will use geometric tools and formulas. Students in the presentations presented their slides, which also included biological information, as the original project was a cross-curricular project.

This session focuses on providing teachers (5th - 12th) a lesson that can be used with any unit focused on graphing. This lesson focuses specifically on learning about the flag of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes, but would be easily adaptable to any flag used by tribes located within Montana.

We are going back to the Moon and onward to Mars. One of the first things to do is to set up a plant-growing station. This introduction will highlight successes and challenges with growing vegetables in the classroom. Students get to eat what they have grown and take home what they have learned (in a practical way).