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New Faces for Fall 2025
David Willis Visiting Assistant Professor David Willis is an Associate Professor in the Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering at the University of Massachusetts Lowell. He has enjoyed teaching a variety of courses since starting at UML in 2008, including: Intro. to Mechanical Engineering, Introduction to Aerospace, Fluid Mechanics, Math Methods for MEs, Capstone Design,…
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ORBIT Classroom Pilot Testing
By Elissa Milto This summer, the CEEO’s Community Outreach Fellows spent time in a local classroom leading computational thinking activities with middle school students. The activities were part of the Opportunities for Robotics, Building, and Inclusive Technology (ORBIT) research project, a two-year project funded by the NSF that began in September 2023. The program was…
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Novel Engineering at the Benjamin Banneker Charter School
By Elissa Milto In Spring 2025, two Tufts undergraduate students worked at the Benjamin Banneker School’s afterschool program as part of the CEEO Outreach Learning Fellows (OLF) Program. The afterschool program was led by Jennifer Gordon, the school’s librarian, and Dwear Carre, a classroom teacher. The program was part of the school’s year-long project examining…
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From Jeju Science High School in South Korea to Eaton Hall for Robotics and Innovation
By Elissa Milto At the end of August, Meredith Portsmore (pictured), CEEO Director, led a day-long, hands-on engineering workshop for thirty middle and high school students from Korea. The students traveled to the United States as part of a delegation from Jeju Science High School on Jeju Island in South Korea. This is the second…
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Exploring Storm Drain Effectiveness with 5th Graders
By Elissa Milto In June, CEEO Community Outreach interns worked with two 5th-grade science classes at the West Somerville Neighborhood School, Somerville Public Schools, taught by Lorin Federico, to facilitate an engineering activity developed as part of the Design Talks (DT) and Community Tech Press (CTP) research projects led by Chelsea Andrews, Kristen Wendell, and…
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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…
