SUNRISE: Schools, University ‘N’ (and) Resources

In the Sciences and Engineering

A NSF/GMU GK-12 Fellows Project

Project Summary: SUNRISE is a new GK-12 project aimed at partnering STEM graduate students (“Fellows”) with school teachers from three different school divisions. The objective of this project is to build a unique model of collaboration among elementary and middle schools, school division administration, and GMU to foster systemic efforts in implementing Information Technology (IT) rich STEM content-knowledge into grade 4-6 education by graduate Fellows. This would be supported by science topics from contemporary areas such as GPS, nanotechnology, and oceanography which would be brought into classroom via lessons with hands-on experiments. The innovative aspect of the project is the IT theme that matches the employment demography of the Northern Virginia region, which will eventually absorb a large portion of the K-12 students participating in this project. The project draws heavily on the experiences of GMU’s faculty, school administration, and teachers to mentor the Fellows in creating a strong Fellow-teacher partnership, through which the Fellows will be able to successfully bring their research and STEM content knowledge into classrooms.