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10.15.25

Stormy shorelines

A scientist adding water to simulate flooding.

The activities are as follows:

Chevak is a village that sits along the Ningliqvak River in Alaska. The area around the village is a flat coastal wetland, a landscape of winding river channels, marshes, and saltwater lakes. In the Yup’ik language, this low-lying terrain is called maraq. Here, salt-tolerant grasses and sedges thrive in an environment where the water is saltier than fresh water, but less salty than sea water. These wetlands serve as nesting grounds for waterfowl during the spring and summer months.

Further upland, the higher ground that sits roughly three meters in elevation is called nunapik, meaning tundra. Salt water from the sea does not touch these areas. The tundra has many freshwater lakes and supports a different plant community, rich with forbs, shrubs, and lichen. Because it experiences less flooding, more types of plants can live in the upland tundra, providing important resources for food and medicine.

In recent years, coastal flooding has become more common near Chevak. Protective sea ice melts earlier each year. Storm surges and rising sea levels now push salt water further inland. These flooding events increase erosion, damage property, and alter the delicate balance of wetland and tundra ecosystems.

Ecologists Karen, Kathy, and Josh began studying the plants around Chevak to better understand how flooding affects these ecosystems. To understand how plant communities at high and low elevations respond to flooding, the scientists designed an experiment at Old Chevak, the original village site abandoned decades ago due to flooding.

Working in collaboration with the Chevak community and the Yukon Delta National Wildlife Refuge, they established experimental plots to simulate flooding. The flooded plots were created by pumping in seawater to simulate high-tide flooding. This was repeated 3 times during the summer. Karen, Kathy, and Josh also kept control plots where no salt water was added. The treatments were repeated at both high and low elevation sites. There were 7 replicates at each location.

At the summer’s end the team collected data on plant growth. They measured the biomass, or weight, of all plants in all of the plots. Karen, Kathy, and Josh grouped the plants into 4 groups. Graminoids, which include grasses and sedges, are the dominant plant group of the maraq. They typically grow well in flooded wetland areas. Forbs are broadleaf herbs, like salmonberries, that grow well in the nunapik. Shrubs include species such as blueberries, cranberries, and tundra tea. Like forbs, they also grow well in the nunapik. Lichens are plant-like species that form low crusts along the ground and are only found in the higher elevation sites.

Karen, Kathy, and Josh thought that plants from the low elevation sites would be made up of more salt and flood-tolerant species and would therefore be less harmed by frequent floods. On the other hand, high elevation sites would consist mostly of plant species that are not salt or flood-tolerant and would not do well during floods.

Featured scientists: Karen Beard (she/her) of Utah State University, Kathy Kelsey (she/her) of the University of Colorado Denver and Joshua Leffler (he/him) of South Dakota State University. Written by: Andrea Pokrzywinski (she/her).

Flesch–Kincaid Reading Grade Level = 8.9

Additional Resources:

The video, “Voices from the Land” introduces the collaboration between scientists and Yup’ik community members. They are working together to respect and care for the land. This narrative is told by the students from Bethel and Chevak Alaska.

This activity pairs with another Data Nugget, “Salmonberries in our future”, which features this same collaboration, but focuses on one culturally significant type of Arctic plant, salmonberries.

9.20.25

Salmonberries in our future

Picking salmonberries is a cultural tradition for many Alaskans.

The activities are as follows:

In the Yup’ik and Cup’ik Native communities of western Alaska, berry picking is a deeply rooted tradition. Many villages are located more than 500 miles from the nearest road system or grocery store. Fresh fruits and vegetables from other places are flown in by small planes at significant cost. This makes local berries a lifeline for these remote villages.

Salmonberries (also known as cloudberries) are one type of Arctic berry. They are prized for their wonderful taste. Salmonberries are rich in nutrients like vitamin C, antioxidants, and essential minerals. One cup of salmonberries alone can meet a person’s daily vitamin C needs. In addition to humans, these berries provide nutrients to other animals, such as migrating birds, small mammals, and bears.

During berry season, families travel across the land to gather berries, preserve them, and store them for the winter. Families use a vast web of winding rivers to travel by boat to reach their berry picking camps. These western Alaska rivers flow towards the Bering Sea, where freshwater mixes with salty ocean tides.

This mix of saltwater and freshwater shapes the tundra landscape. Tough, salt-tolerant plants, like grasses and sedges, often dominate low-lying areas closest to the sea. Slightly higher ground, just above the reach of the tides, provides a more suitable home for berries. These subtle shifts in water levels play a large role in determining where berries can grow.

Ecologists Karen, Katharine, and Joshua are collaborating with Native communities to learn more about how changes in climate are affecting berry plants. They are studying two major changes already observed under climate change – warming and flooding. Over time, warming and flooding combined could change the entire makeup of plant communities. This will affect whether local families are able to continue their traditions and access this valuable food source.

Alaska’s average temperatures are increasing, more so than other parts of the globe. This warming might help some plants by extending the growing season. With more time and sunlight, salmonberries and other plants may actually grow faster.

Climate change is also expected to increase flooding in some areas of coastal Alaska. Storms are already becoming stronger and more frequent, pushing seawater farther inland. Because of this, flooding events are increasing in frequency. Rising sea levels and storm surges may kill salmonberry plants because these plants are not adapted to having their roots submerged in salty water. They used this water to simulate flooding events in the plots. In the end, their experiment had four different types of plots: (1) Control plots with no warming or flooding, (2) plots that were warmed, (3) plots that were flooded, and (4) plots that were both warmed and flooded.

To tease apart the effects of warming and flooding, Karen, Katharine, and Joshua designed a field experiment to simulate climate change. They built clear plastic structures, called open-topped chambers, to trap heat and raise the temperature by about 2°C. These chambers can be thought of as mini time machines, creating small areas that have the expected temperatures of the coming decades. Next, they created flooded plots using brackish, or slightly salty, water that they collected where the fresh river water meets the sea.

They let these treatments run the full growing season. After that time, the team collected data on salmonberry growth. Karen, Katharine, and Joshua measured both the height and biomass of salmonberry plants in all of the plots. These two measures are good estimates of how many berries the plants will produce – the larger the plant, the more berries it can make. They were very precise in their measurements; in a place where food and traditions are tied to the land, every berry matters.

Featured scientists: Karen Beard (she/her) of Utah State University, Katharine Kelsey (she/her) of the University of Colorado Denver and Joshua Leffler (he/him) of South Dakota State University. Written by: Andrea Pokrzywinski (she/her).

Flesch–Kincaid Reading Grade Level = 5.7

9.8.25

Join Data Nuggets at NABT 2025!

We are looking forward to sharing Data Nuggets at the 2025 NABT Professional Development Conference. NABT will be held from October 30th through November 2nd at the St. Louis Union Station Hotel in St. Louis, Missouri. Details are below!

Title: Authentic scientific research and data for the classroom with Data Nuggets
Description: Data Nuggets are free resources, co-designed by scientists and teachers to bring authentic data and research into classrooms. They highlight the true process of science, along with any surprises along the way. In this hands-on Huxley Award session we will demonstrate best practices for their use in biology classrooms.
Presenter: Dr. Elizabeth Schultheis
Date & Time: Thursday, October 30, 2025 at 12:30 PM–2:30 PM
Location: Midway Suite 7 & 8

Hands-on Data Nuggets workshop to learn about the program and go through classroom-ready example activities!

9.5.25

Salmonberries in our future – draft for piloting

Thank you for piloting our latest activity! Download and complete the student activity below.

The activities are as follows:

8.27.25

Can kelp help the plovers?

The activities are as follows:

It’s a beach day! You’re walking through the sand on a southern California beach, looking for a place to put your things. You notice there are clumps of dried-up seaweed everywhere. As you brush aside some of these clumps to lay out your towel, a shrimp-like bug jumps out at you and bounces off your hand! With smelly dried seaweed, small birds skittering across the sand, and hopping bugs, you wonder, is this beach healthy? Yes! These are all parts of a thriving food web.

Beaches are home to many important species that each play a role in the ecosystem. On the Pacific Coast of California, the dried-up seaweed is typically made up of several species of kelp. Kelp captures the sun’s energy through photosynthesis. Beach hoppers, the little jumping “bugs”, are actually small crustaceans
that feed on the kelp. In turn, these beach hoppers are the main food source for birds.

Snowy plovers are a type of bird that loves to eat beach hoppers. This shorebird species is threatened in California due to habitat loss. The sandy beaches where the plovers live and nest are also places where people like to walk and play. Scientists want to better understand what makes up the base of the food web that supports plovers to help their populations recover.

High school seniors, Mari and Azra, visited beaches in Lompoc, a coastal city in California, many times with their science classes. They wanted to learn more about the sandy beach ecosystem, so they read an article from a local research group at the University of California-Santa Barbara. On one of their field trips, they learned about a scientist named Jenny Dugan. Jenny and members of her lab study the beach hoppers’ important role in the sandy beach ecosystem. The Dugan lab had done a series of experiments to see what types of kelp beach hoppers liked to eat.

Azra (left) and Mari (right) working with kelp.

Mari and Azra wanted to set up a similar experiment to see if the beach hoppers in the Lompoc area preferred the same species of kelp. Their teacher, Ms. Moore, collected beach hoppers, sand, and kelp on her way to school one day. Mari and Azra set up ten plastic containers by measuring an equal amount of damp sand and punching holes in the lids. Then they tried to put 10 beach hoppers into the container. But it was hard to know the exact number until the very end of the experiment because some would hop out before the lid was on! At the end of the study, the number ranged from 8-15 beach hoppers in each container. Finally, Mari and Azra weighed out 15.0 grams of kelp and put it on top of the sand in the containers. They put one type of kelp in each container. Four containers had feather boa kelp, Egregia, four containers had giant kelp, Macrocystis, and two containers had Laminaria, another type of kelp. Mari and Azra also set up controls for each type of kelp with sand and kelp, but no beach hoppers. This container would tell them how much kelp weight was lost to water evaporation over the 3 days of the experiment, and not due to being eaten.

Trial 1: Mari and Azra placed the containers outside in a shady spot for three days. On the third morning, they opened up the containers to weigh the kelp that remained. Before weighing the kelp, they rinsed it to remove excess sand and dried it gently to remove excess water. Finally, they counted the beach hoppers that were in the container.

Trial 2: After reviewing their results from this experiment, Mari and Azra realized the beach hoppers did not like Laminaria at all. They decided to repeat the experiment using kelp and beach hoppers from a different beach, and did not include Laminaria as a food source.

Featured scientists: Mari and Azra from Lompoc High School, California. Jenny Dugan from the University of California-Santa Barbara. Written by: Melissa Moore from Lompoc High School.

Flesch–Kincaid Reading Grade Level = 8.1

8.20.25

Anole’s new niche

Yoel looking for lizards on a spoil island.
Photo Credit: Adam Algar

The activities are as follows:

Throughout our history, humans have been moving species around the world. In your own backyard there are likely multiple species that have come from different countries and mixed into your local ecosystem. Human movement of species has sped up in the last 150 years as we have gotten better at traveling by trains, planes, boats, and cars.

An open question is, what happens to species when they are moved around? Scientists can study both the species that have been moved, called introduced species, and the original species that were there before, called native species.

One interesting system to study is the anole lizard populations in Florida. In this case, there is both an introduced species that arrived relatively recently, the brown anole, and a species that has been there for much longer, the green anole.

The story of these two anoles and their interactions begins millions of years ago when both the green anole and the brown anole evolved in Cuba. They had different niches, or areas of specialization in their ecosystem when they lived there together. The green anole mostly perched high up on tree trunks, moving through branches and leaves as it looked for insects to eat. The brown anole preferred to perch lower down, finding its food on the ground and the lower part of tree trunks.

The Green Anole (*Anolis carolinensis*) and the Brown Anole (*Anolis sagrei*). Photo Credit: Adam Algar

Then, 2-4 million years ago, the green anole established a new population in Florida. How it did this, we are not sure. But it probably was blown by hurricanes from Cuba to Florida on rafts of trees and other vegetation. Once in Florida, it spread throughout the southeastern United States. As best we can tell, the green anole changed its niche once it was in the United States without the brown anole around. Data from previous research suggest that it started finding insect prey on the ground and perched lower down in the tree trunks.

Then, in the 1950s, the brown anole came to southern Florida through human movement on boats. This probably happened because humans were moving agricultural products (like sugar cane) from Cuba to the United States.

Yoel is a scientist studying anoles, and he wanted to know how green anoles respond to the recent presence of the brown anole. Now that they are together in Florida, the two anole species interact a lot.

Looking south at Spoil Islands along the Intracoastal Waterway shipping channel in Mosquito Lagoon. Photo credit: Todd Campbell

They both have a large population, they eat similar insects, and likely compete for food and space. Yoel thought the green anoles might respond by changing their behavior and habitat use. Yoel predicted that the green anoles would return to the treetops once the brown anole arrived, living like their ancestors did with the brown anole in Cuba. He also thought that the brown anole would keep low on the tree trunks, because that is where it has always perched while it coexisted with the green anoles in Cuba.

To test his hypothesis, Yoel’s team worked on eleven islands that were approximately the size of football-fields in Mosquito Lagoon, Florida. All eleven islands had green anole populations on them. Six of the eleven islands also had brown anole populations present on them. This meant that five islands only had one species, the green anole.

This created an ideal “natural experiment” to collect data on how green anoles use the habitat when they are alone, compared with when they are living on islands with the brown anole. To do this, Yoel collected data on perch height. He and his team did this by walking through the island habitats slowly until they spotted a lizard. Then, they measured the height of the spot where the lizards were sitting in the trees.

Featured scientists: Featured scientist: Yoel Stuart (he/him) from Loyola University Chicago

Flesch–Kincaid Reading Grade Level = 9.0

7.5.25

Catching fish with sound

Mei next to the research vessel, Endeavor

The activities are as follows:

In our ocean, the connections between the environment and marine organisms are intricate and complex. The watery surroundings connect each level of the food web – including marine mammals, large fish, schooling fish, phytoplankton, and more. Climate change is causing our ocean to become warmer, and organisms are already starting to respond. When ocean waters change, the effects cascade through different levels of the food web. In order to understand how marine organisms, and their interactions, are affected by changing climate, we need accurate measurements that tell us what populations are like today and continue monitoring into the future.
As a biological oceanographer, Mei’s research focuses on organisms in the middle of marine food webs. These are the small schooling fish, like anchovies and herring, that consume other organisms, but are also vulnerable to predation. Growing up in Japan, the ocean was always a part of Mei’s life through hobbies such as swimming, fishing, and also from knowing the cultural importance of eating seafood and learning to prepare for tsunamis. She was first introduced to ocean science through a local fisher who had an oyster farm near her hometown. Since then, she has pursued her career as an oceanographer across three different countries – Japan, Canada, and the United States – both in academia and industry.

Mei now does research as part of a Long-Term Ecological Research project out of Massachusetts. This means that Mei is part of a scientist team working together to study long-term patterns in the ocean.
Looking at data over time allows Mei and others to better identify and understand the consequences of climate change. This information Mei next to the research vessel, Endeavor will help fishers and fisheries managers make decisions and prepare for the future.

Mei testing equipment before a research cruise

In August 2023, Mei went to sea on one of the project’s research cruises. She wanted to take a closer look at one of the fastest-warming ocean areas and richest fisheries in the world – the continental shelf of the Northeast U.S. She boarded a large research ship for 6 days with a team of 14 other scientists who specialize in different areas of oceanographic research. To more accurately collect these data, Mei used sound! Echosounders bounce sound off marine organisms, such as fish. This tool is similar to fish finders that are used by most fishing boats. However, the technology used by Mei is more sensitive and provides more detailed data.
The amount of sound that comes back to the ship after bouncing off fish or anything in the water is called volume backscattering strength, and is measured in decibels (dB). The intensity of what comes back can serve as a measure of fish abundance. If there are more fish, the number becomes larger (less negative).
While the echosounder is operating, other members of the research team measure water temperature and other parameters from the surface to near the bottom. Temperature is measured in degrees Celsius (ºC), and depth is recorded in meters (m). Mei wanted to use these data to give her a snapshot in time of where fish are located.

Featured scientist: Mei Sato (she/her) from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and
Northeast U.S. Shelf LTER (NES-LTER)

Flesch–Kincaid Reading Grade Level = 9.8

7.5.25

Bear Necessities: A genetic panel for bear identification

The activities are as follows:

North Carolina is home to many black bears. As human development expands into bear habitats, conflicts between people and bears are becoming more common. In these situations, identifying individual bears and understanding their origins is essential. This ensures that wildlife officials can correctly manage aggressive or relocated bears. It also allows for better tracking of bear populations and their movements across the state, helping to inform long-term conservation approaches.

Though each individual bear has its own genotype, or unique genetic makeup, individuals within the same population often share more DNA with each other than with members of other populations. A group of scientists started comparing the DNA of black bears in California and identified 11 unique regions, called loci, in the DNA of bears from different populations. This set of loci that the scientists can use to assign individual black bears to different populations is called Ursaplex.

Each loci have microsatellites, which are repetitive sequences of nucleotide bases that vary between individuals or populations. Different versions of the microsatellite loci are called alleles. By examining these patterns in a bear’s genotype, scientists can identify bears at an individual level and tell which population they are from.

Isabella is a wildlife geneticist who studies how we can use genetic tools to conserve wild animal populations. She has always been passionate about animals and conservation. Isabella, along with other scientists, wants to test whether or not the Ursaplex panel could work for black bears in North Carolina.

North Carolina bears are split into three different management groups based on where they are found: Mountain, Piedmont, and Coastal. Isabella wanted to know whether black bears show genetic differences based on which management group they live in. If so, she wanted to see if any of the microsatellites in the Ursaplex panel could be used to identify which management group a bear is from.

Isabella obtained blood or saliva samplesfor350black bears from collaborators at the Wildlife Resource Commission, the state agency for wildlife management. The samples came from bears in the Mountain and Coastal management groups. The Piedmont bear population is significantly smaller and elusive, so samples from Piedmont bears were not available. She extracted the DNA from the samples and found the genetic sequence at each of the 11 loci in Ursaplex. Isabella looked at then umber of nucleotide base repeats in each bear’s genetic sequence and used the data to identify any patterns based on where the bear was from. Each of the 11 loci included arebi-allelic, meaning each bear will have two copies of the locus (one from their mom and one from their dad). Recently, Isabella received a blood sample from a new baby bear, Murray, who was rescued by wildlife managers. This baby bear was alone when he was found, so we don’t know where in the state he came from. He was found in the Eastern part of the state, so Isabella thought that his parents were likely both Coastal management group bears.

Featured scientists: Isabella Livingston (she/her) from North Carolina State University Written with Kate Price

Flesch–Kincaid Reading Grade Level = 9.6

6.13.25

What grows when the forest goes?

Area of the H.J. Andrews Experimental Forest in Oregon, a few years after a fire.

The activities are as follows:

The H.J. Andrews Experimental Forest, or Andrews for short, is a long-term ecological research site in the Cascade Mountains of Oregon. The forest is a temperate old-growth rainforest. It is known for its lush and green understory of flowering plants, ferns, mosses and a towering canopy of Douglas fir, Western hemlock, Red cedar, and other trees. Scientists have spent decades studying how plants, animals, land use, and climate are all connected in this ecosystem.

Matt is a biology teacher who has spent two summers in the field working with scientists at the Andrews. These experiences have been valuable ways to bring real data and research back to his students! When he visits, Matt works closely with Joe and Cole. Joe is a scientist who has spent many years working in the forest studying the impact of disturbances on plants. Cole is in Joe’s lab and has been focusing on fire’s effects on the forest during graduate school.

Historically, large, severe fires have been a part of the ecology of forests in Oregon. They typically occur every 200-500 years. Many of the plants at the Andrews Forest are those that can deal with fire. Fires clear out dead plants, return nutrients to the soil, and promote new growth of understory and canopy plants. With climate change impacting temperature and rainfall across the globe, forests in Oregon are increasingly experiencing longer periods of dry and hot weather. These changes are causing an increase in the frequency and severity of wildfires.

On Matt’s last day at the Andrews in 2023, a lightning strike started a wildfire in a far corner of the forest. With hundreds of firefighters on the ground and several helicopters in the air, the “Lookout Fire” burned for several months, consuming about 70% of the Andrews forest!

Plots in 2023 being surveyed for native and invasive plants to calculate the proportion that are invasive after a burn.

When Matt returned in the summer of 2024, it looked nothing like the forest he had left. The fire completely changed the course of his research experience. When he saw the scorched forest, he began to wonder how it would recover. He also observed that the fire had not burned at the same intensity throughout the forest. Some areas of Andrews were burned more, and in some spots, the fire had been less intense.

Matt thought that some plants may do better after a severe burn, while other species might do worse. Specifically, Matt wanted to see whether native and invasive plants would show differences after a fire. Plants that have historically grown in an area without human interference are called native plants. These plants have a long history of adapting to the specific conditions in an area. When a plant species is moved by humans to a new area and grows outside of its natural range, it is called an invasive plant. Invasives often grow large and fast, taking over habitats, and pushing out native species. Invasive plants tend to be the ones that can grow fast and handle disturbances, so the team expected that invasive species would recover more quickly than native plants after high severity fires.

It was still too early to re-enter the areas burned by the Lookout Fire, so Matt and Joe chose another recent fire. They used data collected from a section of the forest that had burned in 2020. In 2021, a year after the fire, scientists put out 80 plots that were 1m²in size to collect data on the understory plants.

Each section was given a burn severity value based on the amount the canopy trees had burned directly over the plot. Scientists would look up at the tree canopy and see how much was missing, and the more that was gone, they knew the burn severity had been higher. Scientists then identified every species of plant in the plots and counted the number of individual plants of each species. This was repeated every year after 2021 to observe changes over time. Matt and Joe decided to analyze data from 2023, which Matt helped collect with Cole. To answer their question, they calculated the proportion of invasive plants in each plot.

Featured scientists: Joe LaManna (he/him) and Cole Doolittle (he/him) from Marquette University and
Matt Retterath (he/him) from Fridley Public Schools.

Flesch–Kincaid Reading Grade Level = 8.9

Additional teacher resources related to this Data Nugget:

There are two blog posts written about the Andrews LTER research featured in this activity.

https://lternet.edu/stories/fire-brings-new-perspectives-on-disturbance-at-h-j-andrews-experimental-forest/
https://lternet.edu/stories/burned-forest-bleached-reef-lter-sites-adapt-to-learn-from-disturbance/

6.9.25

NSF Terminates $1.5M Data Nuggets Grant

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