Description

Science Education for New Civic Engagements and Responsibilities (SENCER) is the signature initiative of the National Center for Science & Civic Engagement. The project is focused on empowering faculty and improving STEM teaching and learning by making connections to civic issues and the SENCER community is composed of professionals, informal and formal educators, and administrators in K-12 and higher education institutions. Notably, SENCER along with Bioquest, PKAL, and POGIL, has been recognized as a community of transformation and is recognized for being one of the few programs that are truly cross-disciplinary bridging connections from formal to informal learning. My presentation will describe examples of ongoing actions that have been catalyzed by SENCER, helping individuals, populations, and communities to improve the educational outcomes for students, provide professional development for faculty, and to enable support for administrative initiatives. With a particular focus on undergraduate research and project-based learning, I will show examples of how SENCER approaches can help transform undergraduate research and projects into meta-high impact practices that tie the research to issues of civic import increasing the impacts on student learning and engagement with STEM while demonstrating the power and limits of science to solve the grand challenges of our time.

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