On Friday, May 9th, the National Science Foundation (NSF) terminated a collaborative research grant shared between Michigan State University and Auburn University, “Sharing Scientist Role Model Stories to Improve Equity and Success in Undergraduate STEM Education”, which had over $1M in unused funds remaining. We join over 1,600 grants abruptly terminated by NSF in recent months, affecting vital research, education, and open science efforts nationally.

NSF has been a critical partner in fueling the Data Nuggets team’s innovations and growth at Michigan State University. In fact, NSF funded the collaboration between scientists and K-12 teachers that sparked the development of Data Nuggets in 2010. Data Nuggets provide over 140 free data literacy activities that reach tens of thousands of educators and countless students per year. Without NSF’s historic investments and continued support, our wildly popular and effective data literacy program would not exist. 

By terminating our collaborative grant, financial support and personnel needed to run this program no longer exist. We are committed to maintaining the existing collection of publicly available Data Nugget resources and continue to provide them for free. However, we will need to revise our operational model in order to develop and disseminate new activities. Additionally, we will no longer be able to conduct and disseminate foundational educational research to increase our understanding of the best teaching practices for using activities featuring scientists within classroom materials. 

The sudden termination of our work is not only devastating for the programmatic and research team – it also wastes years of previous NSF-supported work and jeopardizes a future we envision filled with free, interactive learning resources to benefit millions of students and educators. In addition, the termination has directly prevented the hiring of 5 early career scientists as well as over 10 undergraduates who would have been trained in science communication, curriculum development, and discipline-based education research. 

Our terminated grant, “Sharing Scientist Role Model Stories to Improve Equity and Success in Undergraduate STEM Education”, centered on further refining Data Nuggets to help more students see themselves in STEM careers. Past research by our team showed that sharing scientist stories within data literacy instruction was an effective way to engage students with the activities and help them relate to scientists. The goal of our terminated research was two-fold: first, to research and provide insight into how to effectively tell scientist role model success stories in instructional materials; second, to create a new set of freely available, evidence-based, educational resources for undergraduate biology classrooms.

The text of our termination letter mirrors many that we have seen, stating that they are “issuing this termination to protect the interests of the government … on the basis that [the grant] no longer effectuates the program goals or agency priorities. This is the final agency decision and not subject to appeal.” Because appealing a grant termination is one way for an institution to raise its voice to object to an unwarranted action, our team submitted an appeal through Michigan State University; Auburn University declined to submit our appeal.

We remain steadfast in our mission to support free educational resources and interactive learning worldwide, to spark interest in data literacy for all students, and to share the stories of researchers who represent the full spectrum of identities within the science community.

More than ever, please consider supporting our work by sharing how important NSF funding has been to developing and advancing resources for STEM education. As the proposed US tax and spending bill goes to the Senate, we encourage those who can to contact your representatives and urge them to support funding for the National Science Foundation (NSF), National Institutes of Health (NIH), the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and other science agencies. Now is the time to act: the current funding proposal would slash NSF funding dramatically. #SaveNSF

Together, we can keep the future of interactive learning open and growing.

Sincerely,

The Data Nuggets Team and Auburn University collaborators

Samson Stynen is a first PhD student in the Haddad Lab at W.K. Kellogg Biological Station. He studies the impacts of climate change on butterfly morphology and demography. He aspires to be a link between educators and scientists. He was awarded a KBS Outreach Fellowship to join the Data Nuggets program and gain experience in science outreach and communication.  

As a first-year graduate student moving from Reno, Nevada, I had some hesitation about whether I’d find connections in Michigan or at the W.K. Kellogg Biological Station (KBS). I never expected that one of my strongest connections would be with an outreach program I had experienced as a student and teacher: Data Nuggets. 

Data Nuggets are lessons designed by scientists to engage K–16 students in data literacy using real scientific data. Coming from an education background, I encountered Data Nuggets during high school as a student, and then again when I was looking for lessons for my own students as a teacher. I had no idea they were connected to KBS! 

In my first semester, I met Liz and Melissa, the creators and directors of Data Nuggets, and began helping occasionally with projects. Then, this past spring, I was fortunate to receive the Data Nuggets Fellowship, where I got to dive deeper into the program, from science communication to program management, and see all the behind-the-scenes work that keeps Data Nuggets running. 

Highlights from the fellowship 

One of the most exciting parts of the fellowship was presenting at the Michigan Science Teachers Association Conference in March. During our session, I spoke with about 25 educators about using Data Nuggets in their classrooms. In the second half of the session, I walked the audience through Little Butterflies on the Prairie, a new Data Nugget based on my lab’s research that had just launched in January. It was amazing to hear directly from teachers about their classroom experiences, how they planned to adapt these lessons for their students, and what resources they’d like to see next. 

I also revived the monthly Data Nuggets newsletter where I highlighted new activities, teacher resources, and the upcoming outreach events. For the February newsletter, I interviewed and wrote a blog post highlighting KBS Post doc Dr. Rosemary Martin to share with teachers how science doesn’t stop in the winter.  

Finally, I was able to help with Data Nugget’s recent effort in highlighting the scientists behind the science. A handful of lessons now include scientist profiles, allowing students to learn not just about the research, but about the people and stories behind it. 

Why Data Nuggets is important

The need for data literacy is quickly rising. However, many classrooms today do not incorporate real data in their lessons. Real data is messy! Data Nuggets are a perfect solution! They get students thinking about the current problems around them, as we have DNs written by people all over the U.S. and world! They get students engaged in real scientific research and the scientists’ creative solutions, and they also get students practicing with authentic data, complete with those dreaded decimals! 

Why outreach matters 

As first year grad student, this fellowship reminded me that research doesn’t end when a paper is published. The next step is sharing that knowledge in ways that matter, like with the next generation of scientists. 

It has been my goal after graduate school to be a bridge between researchers and educators. Whether that be with an open-source program for teachers or by returning to the classroom myself, I hope to continue to share Data Nuggets resources.  

I am thrilled to be able to work with Data Nuggets and I look forward to the continued connection in many semesters, and years, to follow. 

When asked to name scientists, students mention the likes of Charles Darwin, Albert Einstein, and Isaac Newton. And when asked to draw a scientist, students almost always draw a white man holding a test tube and wearing a lab coat. Professor Robin Costello from the University at Buffalo tells us more about a new study that parsed the effects of including visual depictions and humanizing information about scientists featured in undergraduate biology course materials.

This post was originally released by The Royal Society, here.

How students think of scientists reflects the false narrative that only certain types of people can be scientists – specifically white men with brilliant minds.

One powerful tool to combat this false narrative is to feature relatable, contemporary scientists whose identities do not match the dominant stereotype of a scientist featured in course materials. To highlight counter-stereotypical scientists, instructors can implement course materials that include photographs of scientists in their lecture slide decks. Or instructors can highlight humanizing information about scientists in their course materials. Sharing information such as the barriers scientists have faced or how they overcame obstacles in STEM may help students relate to scientists and envision their own STEM careers.

In our latest study, we parsed the effects of including visual depictions and humanizing information about scientists featured in undergraduate biology course materials with a large-scale research study. Over several academic terms and 36 undergraduate institutions in the United States, we distributed three versions of short quantitative activities (Data Nuggets) that varied in their level of information about the featured scientists (from including only their names and pronouns to full Project Biodiversify scientist profiles).

Data from over 3,700 students revealed that including humanizing information about scientists improves student engagement with quantitative biology activities. Photos of the scientists alone were not enough to improve student engagement. Instead, when provided information about the scientists’ life experiences, students found the activities more interesting, more relevant to their future careers, and put more effort into the activities. Our data suggests this pattern was driven by increased relatability of the featured scientists. 

While these results applied to all students, the strongest impacts were evident among students who shared excluded identities with the featured scientists.Our findings underscore the importance of providing students with examples of relatable scientists in STEM courses, rather than simply adding photos to increase representation. By highlighting humanizing information about scientists, instructors can both increase student engagement in their courses and improve equity in STEM.

We recommend several evidence-based resources to use in biology courses, including the Data Nuggets and Project Biodiversify materials studied here (together, DataVersify), as well as Scientist Spotlights, BioGrapI, and the Story Collider Podcast.

When the days grow shorter and the landscape is blanketed in snow, it might seem like nature has gone dormant. Trees stand bare, ponds freeze over, and many animals disappear from sight. But winter is a critical time for many species. Researchers brave the cold to study how organisms survive and even thrive in winter’s harsh conditions.

For many species, winter isn’t an obstacle—it’s a necessity. Some organisms have evolved incredible adaptations to endure the cold. Insects use snow as an insulating blanket and even plants rely on winter conditions, with some seeds requiring a cold period before they can sprout.

But winter isn’t what it used to be; Climate change is altering seasonal patterns, leading to shorter, warmer winters. These changes disrupt the delicate balance that many species depend on. Snow cover is disappearing earlier, and fluctuating temperatures cause unpredictable freeze-thaw cycles, which can be harmful to plants and animals alike.

Postdoctoral researcher associate Rosemary Martin (Rosie) studies how cold temperatures affect the development of organisms, particularly dragonfly larvae. These larvae spend their early lives underwater before emerging as winged adults, and rather than hibernating in winter, they remain active. Understanding how temperatures shape their development is crucial, especially as climate change alters seasonal temperature patterns.

To investigate this, Rosie and her colleagues conduct lab experiments with six species of dragonflies. They expose them to different pre-winter temperatures before placing them in bio chambers at 4°C—mimicking the temperature of water beneath the ice. By measuring metabolic rates and analyzing fat and protein levels, they aim to uncover how different pre-winter conditions influence their health and survival. If larvae grow faster or slower due to higher pre-winter temperatures, it could impact the entire food web, from the predators that rely on dragonflies to the insects they eat.

“They actually stay active through the winter,” Rosie explains. “You can imagine how having built up resources—and still burning through them during the winter—affects their body condition in the spring. That’s what we’re trying to understand.”

Despite the cold temperatures, Rosie notes that “this is the part that I enjoy the most. […] Part of the reason I got into winter ecology is because I wanted an excuse to get outside into the field all year round.” Winter ecology does come with its unique challenges though. It is often understudied as it doesn’t line up with the usual academic schedule. “There’s also the danger of working on ice,” Rosie mentioned, “especially during the shoulder seasons when it’s less stable. And, of course, a lot of people just don’t think about winter as a biologically active season. […] But in these mid-latitude to high-latitude environments it is obviously a really impactful environmental filter.”

One surprising fact Rosie often shares is that many people don’t realize dragonflies have an aquatic stage at all. “First, I have to explain that, and then I get to the fact that they’re active through the winter—which surprises not just the general public but even some ecologists.”

A Data Nugget on Rosie’s research will be published shortly! 

Getting Students Involved in Winter Science

For educators or students interested in exploring winter science, Rosie offers creative ideas. “If you have access to a refrigerator—and don’t mind keeping live insects in there—it can serve as a great proxy for an aquatic winter environment at 4°C,” she suggests. A mini bio chamber with LED lights and a timer can simulate winter conditions.

For those exploring the outdoors, Rosie recommends digging under the snow to examine leaf litter insects. “Try warming them up and see how long it takes for them to resume activity—that can give you insights into their overwintering strategies!” Other ideas include observing animal tracks, studying winter-active birds, and comparing how different types of trees handle the cold.

Bringing Winter Science to Your Classroom With Data Nuggets

Winter offers countless opportunities to engage students in real-world science. Data Nuggets provides resources to explore seasonal changes, including lessons on:

• How road salt affects freshwater ecosystems
• The importance of snow cover for insect survival 
• How climate change is shifting winter conditions
• How animals adapt to survive freezing temperatures

These lessons use real data collected by scientists, allowing students to analyze patterns and draw their own conclusions. By bringing winter science into the classroom, you can help students see that research doesn’t stop when the temperature drops—it simply takes on a new form.

So, this winter, bundle up and explore the science happening all around you! Whether it’s tracking animal footprints in the snow, investigating how ice forms, or analyzing real-world data, there’s no shortage of discoveries waiting to be made.

External Links: 

Life under the Ice

Dragonfly larvae

Article Highlights

• Michigan State University’s Data Nuggets program is starting its third round of funding from the National Science Foundation to improve data literacy in K-16 students.
• The program, operated by the Kellogg Biological Station, also introduces real STEM professionals through storytelling, helping students better relate to their projects and engage more deeply with the program’s content.
• In collaboration with Auburn University, the newest NSF grant will help Data Nuggets further that engagement and introduce students to a greater diversity of scientists.

A data literacy program that’s also changing students’ relationships with science and scientists is entering its third round of funding with a new $1.5 million grant from the National Science Foundation.

In collaboration with Auburn University, the Data Nuggets program at the W.K. Kellogg Biological Station, or KBS, will work to identify factors that improve equity and success in undergraduate STEM education.

Launched by Michigan State University in 2011, Data Nuggets is a curriculum development project designed to help students better understand and use data. The program shows how professionals in science, technology, engineering and math really work with data by sharing their stories, which also enables students to relate on a much more personal level.  

Data Nuggets challenges students from kindergarten through undergraduate levels to answer scientific questions using data to support their claims. The questions and data originate from real research provided by scientists whose studies range from physics to ecology to animal behavior. 

To add the personal element, Data Nuggets is collaborating with Project Biodiversify — another education program started at MSU — to add the scientists’ bios, which include information like hobbies and their lives outside of science. This helps students relate to the researchers and see them less as strangers in lab coats and more as scientific role models. 

“We’ve found that it’s the scientists that are engaging students in the activities,” said Elizabeth Schultheis, co-leader of the Data Nuggets program. “If they connect to the role model, then you can get students to do the data literacy activities because they know, ‘Oh, this is a real person. I relate to this person. And I’m working with authentic, real data. I’m not just doing busy work.’” 

Schultheis, who earned her doctorate in plant biology from MSU, is also the education and outreach coordinator for the Long-Term Ecological Research, or LTER, program at KBS, which supports Data Nuggets. Schultheis and co-leader, Melissa Kjelvik, developed and run the program, forming partnerships to research and fund the program.

“With our current research, we’re trying to figure out what is the special thing that’s really resonating with students in terms of the role models,” Kjelvik said.

“Our research will investigate how and why role models are critically important for students,” said Cissy Ballen. Ballen is an associate professor in the Department of Biological Sciences at Auburn, the lead institution on the NSF grant, which builds on the past success of Data Nuggets and will help ensure its future impact.

“The theory behind this is that students must be able to see a scientist’s success as attainable to relate to that scientist,” Ballen said. “My prediction is that students will find success most relatable when they see some scientists, like them, have struggled with science, but then were able to overcome that struggle.” 

Making data talk

Many students’ eyes gloss over when they hear terms like “data” or “science.” 

Even Schultheis admits she didn’t appreciate the significance of data until she was a grad student collecting her own. The problem, she said, is that kids are often taught how to make a graph, for example, but not why.

“I never really learned to care until I understood the reason I make a graph is because I want to answer a question,” Schultheis explained. “I need to see the data, what it looks like. And that’s why I make a graph.” 

Data Nuggets doesn’t change the skills that are taught in conventional curricula. Students still learn how to make and label axes, for example, and then how to plot data to create graphs. But they also get a more immersive introduction into why real people use these skills.

“Our purpose with these Data Nuggets modules is that everything is always given real context and always in service of a scientific question,” Schultheis said. “It’s always: Here’s a scientist. Here’s the question that they really care about and the reason they collected this data is because they want to answer this question. And you make the graph to visualize it so that you can see what the data is telling you.”

Data Nugget activities come in four levels, so instructors can use the ones best suited for their specific classes. Level 4 activities are designed for high schoolers and undergraduates, while level 1 activities are appropriate for elementary schools and higher grades looking for a refresher after a summer break, for example.

Teachers also have flexibility with how to present an activity based on their goals. For example, instructors can choose activities with completed graphs so students can focus on interpreting what they see to answer questions.

Or students can be given blank grids to give them experience in creating useful representations of data from scratch.

Connie High, a science teacher at Delton Kellogg High School about five miles from KBS, calls Data Nuggets “a game changer.”  

She said that her students, when they’re new to Data Nuggets, can usually make claims and find supporting evidence. The challenge is learning how to articulate the connection between the two.

“They really struggle with how to link claim, evidence and reasoning. They tend to just restate the evidence again,” High said. 

“With Data Nuggets, we definitely see an improvement from the beginning of the year to the end.” 

Humanizing data 

The Data Nuggets program started 13 years ago as a grassroots collaboration between KBS researchers — including Schultheis and Kjelvik, who were then grad students at KBS — and K-12 teachers, including High. 

More than 120 scientists have contributed more than 120 data literacy activities since then. Tens of thousands of people regularly use the Data Nuggets website. Links to various Data Nuggets stories can even be found in science textbooks. 

“Long-term relationship building is why we got such good insights from teachers about what their students needed, because they already had trust with us, and we went into their classrooms and learned from them,” Schultheis said. “And building relationships with scientists who trust us to tell their stories correctly, who are giving their own stories for students to read and learn about, continues to be critical to our success.”

But exactly how to best package and present the data stories falls to Schultheis and her colleagues. Previous research has supported the idea that focusing on the scientist and why they collected the data is essential. After all, data is just numbers. It’s human interaction that puts numbers in perspective, gives the scientific question context and engages students in the activity.

“Humanizing the data is at the crux of this work,” Ballen said. “Data Nuggets is such a successful resource because of the way they humanize the data component and contextualize it within the science itself and show that it’s being done by relatable scientists. They do that really well.”

With its third round of NSF funding, Data Nuggets is attempting to fine-tune how to best present the scientist role models and the stories to improve student engagement with science even more.

The goal is not only to increase the portrayal of under-represented groups among scientist contributors, but also for students to see that they share some things in common with the scientists they see. 

“We used to ask students to draw what a scientist looks like, and they all would draw someone who looks like Albert Einstein,” High said. “It’s incredibly important that they see there are scientists who look like them.”

“You can imagine if you were a student sitting in a classroom you might get an activity that features a scientist from a prestigious university with awards and that sort of thing, and that might not be very relatable,” Ballen said. “Success might not be perceived as attainable.”

Data Nuggets is working to combat that perception.

For example, there’s a Data Nugget called “Trees and the City”, featuring a photo of a smiling University of Minnesota ecologist named Adrienne Keller wearing a bike helmet and sunglasses. A video shows Keller riding her bike through neighborhoods in the Twin Cities as she describes her interest in tree patterns. She poses her dataset’s main question: “Are there differences in the total canopy cover or the number of tree species planted in a neighborhood based on residents’ income level or percentage of BIPOC — Black, Indigenous, and People of Color — residents?”

Another Data Nugget was written by a community scientist from Bayfield, Wisconsin, located on the south shore of Lake Superior. He’s pictured wearing shorts and gym shoes as he stands on ice. 

For his Nugget, he used historical data to answer his question if the winters were getting shorter and changing the dynamics of how people could travel in the area. 

He also happened to be a high school student.

“That’s the dream outcome,” Schultheis said, “that students realize how powerful data are, and they can be advocates for themselves and their communities because they can actually go to the source of information and ask and answer questions.” 

This story was written by Lynn Waldsmith, and was originally posted on the Michigan State University, College of Natural Science website here.

Scientific role models increase student success in their science courses as well as inspire students to pursue science careers. The Ballen Lab at Auburn University has completed significant research demonstrating that role models with diverse identities are lacking in undergraduate biology classrooms. Students with identities that are not represented in their undergraduate science courses do not have many opportunities to see themselves in science careers and as scientific leaders.

“I am excited to collaborate with researchers at Michigan State University to identify factors that improve equity and success in undergraduate STEM education. Our research will investigate how and why role models are critically important for students,” said Cissy Ballen, associate professor in the Department of Biological Sciences.

The collaborative team, led by Ballen at Auburn and Elizabeth Schultheis at MSU, was awarded $1.5 million from the National Science Foundation’s Division of Undergraduate Education.

Robin Costello, a postdoctoral scientist in the Ballen Lab working to understand the relationship between role models and successful student outcomes, explained, “Featuring relatable scientist role models in classroom materials is a low-cost and accessible way to increase the recruitment and persistence of students with identities historically and currently excluded from STEM.”

The research team’s recent research showed a direct correlation between relating to scientific role models and student engagement. “These results led to more questions about the critical features of scientist role models that make them effective and served as the foundation for the recently awarded project,” Ballen explained. “Theory makes several predictions about why and how role models are critical to student success. With this support from NSF, we will conduct critical research that tests theory on what makes an effective role model.”

Costello added, “Our research will specifically explore how to tell scientists role model stories in ways that improve student outcomes.” The project is entitled “Collaborative Research: Sharing Scientist Role Model Stories to Improve Equity and Success in Undergraduate STEM Education.”

“Several popular resources have been created to combat the pervasiveness of the stereotypical scientist in biology and STEM curricular materials,” Ballen added. An important long-term result of the project are free, open-source materials for educators to use in their classrooms to nurture more inclusive environments where students can learn from a wide array of STEM leaders to whom they can relate.

These resources will develop biology data literacy curricular materials that teach quantitative skills while simultaneously highlighting the diversity of scientists in STEM. These resources will be based on two well-known educational resources: Data Nuggets, resources that are developed in a partnership between scientists and teachers, and Project Biodiversify, a site that offers education tools for diversity and inclusion in biology classrooms.

Our team will be recruiting instructors to implement the activities in classrooms. If you are interested in participating in this project, please contact mjb0100@auburn.edu. For the original story, written by Maria Gebhardt, visit the Auburn page here.

When you were a child, what was your image of a scientist? Could you imagine yourself in those shoes?

A new, National Science Foundation-funded study led by Michigan State University researchers and others aims to better understand how science instruction that contains diverse scientist role models affects student attitudes about science, technology, engineering and mathematics—STEM—courses and careers. 

Data Nuggets, a project that has created free STEM classroom activities since 2011, is integral to the new study. Data Nuggets was founded by postdoctoral researchers Elizabeth Schultheis and Melissa Kjelvik, both of whom conducted doctoral research at the W.K. Kellogg Biological Station. The Data Nuggets activities were co-developed through collaborations between scientists and K-16 educators.

MSU ecologist Marjorie Weber will lead the study. Other members of the research team include Schultheis and Kjelvik, and Cissy Ballen and Ash Zemenick of Auburn University.

Post originally from Kellogg Biological Station.

Our first Teacher Feature is by Karen Murphy, who recently used one of our new Data Nuggets by the Harvard Forest LTER with her ecology students. Karen a high school science and special education teacher at Summit Academy, a public day school in Amherst, Massachusetts. 

I was able to use A window into a tree’s world Data Nugget with my ecology class as part of a unit on the carbon cycle. I found that students were interested in the relationship between tree rings and temperature/climate. They appreciated the idea of being able to determine past climate and tree age using tree rings. I asked one student for specific feedback and she said that the assignment was “interactive, informative, and fun.”

This Data Nugget provided students with access to a current, real example of the scientific method in action. For example, the class was able to practice identifying the independent and dependent variables, graph and analyze data, and to build on this knowledge to creatively form their own questions for further research. 

I greatly appreciate the Teacher Guide and PowerPoint that were found on the web page. There is a lot of valuable information to share with the class, including instructional material on the science of climate change and sources of evidence. I now hope to incorporate more Data Nuggets into future classes.

In this workshop, we will share strategies for using Data Nuggets in the classroom and introduce one that features microsatellite data for various populations of striped bass. This Data Nugget will give students an opportunity to explore genetic markers and how they can be used to inform the management of an important sport fishery by deciphering which spawning grounds the fish were born in.

The materials from the Data Nugget workshop are as follows:

• Megan’s PowerPoint slides
• Data Nugget PowerPoint slides
• Data Nugget – Fishy origins

Workshop organized and presented by: Megan Phifer-Rixey, Chelsea Barreto, Carleigh Engstrom, Elizabeth Schultheis, Melissa Kjelvik, and Louise Mead. For more information on the NABT 2019 conference, check out their website, here.

BEACON CENTER FOR THE STUDY OF EVOLUTION IN ACTION, MICHIGAN STATE UNIVERSITY, THE AMERICAN SOCIETY OF NATURALISTS, & MONMOUTH UNIVERSITY