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Small Sparks, Big Futures: Teaching STEM in Juvenile Detention
Becky McDowell Chief Executive Officer STEM in Action Educational Consulting, LLC Tufts Teacher Engineering Education Program Alum A few weeks ago, I came across a powerful post by a local school board member and passionate advocate for youth in Sioux Falls, SD. She highlighted the incredible work being done by volunteers at the Minnehaha County…
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A Community of Practice to Create MakerPlaces for Navajo Community Centers
By Rob Hayes Tufts CEEO and Key’ah Advanced Rural Manufacturing Alliance (KARMA), a Native non-profit organization in the Navajo Nation have jointly expanded KARMA’s MakerPlace initiative to two community centers in the eastern part of the Navajo Nation. Founded as part of the Navajo Hopi Solidarity project, Tooh Haltsooi Community Center in Sheep Springs, NM,…
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How a Group of Students Taught Me What Engineering Education Could Look Like
By Mohammed Tonkal During my PhD at Tufts, I spent several years exploring a simple but powerful question: What happens when kids work together like real engineers? Not just following instructions—but managing tasks, solving problems, and building something meaningful as a team. I ran several long-term projects with upper elementary and middle school students. In…
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Staff Spotlight: Elissa Milto
CEEO Director of Outreach Elissa Milto recently won a Tufts Distinction Award, so we sat down to chat with her about the award and her more than 20 years at Tufts CEEO. Tell us a bit about yourself and your background. I went to college in Richmond, Virginia and came to the Boston area for…
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You Don’t Need to Read to Appreciate a Story — And That’s a Lesson for Learning to Code
By Ulrik Rosenberg, Learning Consultant at Tåsingeskolen, Svendborg, Denmark You don’t need to know how to read to enjoy a story. Long before children learn to decode letters, they listen, imagine, and understand narratives. This doesn’t diminish the importance of literacy — on the contrary, it shows how curiosity and engagement can lead to learning. The same…
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Expanding Sixth-Grade Youth’s Understanding Of Engineering Through Critical Multilingual Journalism
Chelsea Andrews, PI Kristen Wendell, Co-PI Greses Perez, Co-PI The Community-Tech-Press project, led by Research Assistant Professor Chelsea Andrews, Associate Professor Kristen Wendell, and McDonnell Family Assistant Professor Greses Pérez, is a 6th-grade science curriculum partnership between Tufts CEEO and Somerville Public Schools. The team, which includes graduate researchers Clara Mabour and Fatima Rahman, has…
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Graduate Student Spotlight: Sophie Hankin
Tell us about where you are from and what your childhood was like. I’m from Oakland, CA, where I lived with my parents and older brother until coming to Tufts for undergrad. I have lots of cousins and both sets of grandparents on the West Coast, so I spent a lot of time with my…
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Transforming Stuffed Animals into Smart Modules
Mechanical Engineering Student Sophie Hankin gives us an update on the Smart Playground project and the studded animals she transformed into Smart Modules. I designed the Smart Module stuffed animals as part of the Smart Playground Project. This project is a collaboration between UC Irvine, Boston College, and the Tufts Center for Engineering Education and…
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Graduate Student Profile: Mohammed Tonkal
Tell us about where you are from and what your childhood was like. I’m from Jeddah, a major city in Saudi Arabia where I grew up and spent most of my life. I’m the middle child among four siblings—three brothers and a sister. In our family, academic excellence was the norm, and getting A’s was…
