Kari O'Connell
Oregon State University, OR·Education Research
Research at the North and South Poles tackles big questions about climate, Earth's history, the universe, and life in extreme places. Yet few people ever see this work firsthand.
- Fields
Education Research
Earth & Environmental Science
- Topics
polar science
Polar STEAM
STEAM education
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Aug 2027
What they work on
- Deploy formal and informal educators to the Arctic and Antarctic through the Polar Educators program, with linked virtual experiences, to inspire teaching that blends art-based and science-based methods.
- Send artists and writers to Antarctica through the Antarctic Artists and Writers program to work with polar researchers and create works that increase public understanding of the continent.
- Build communities across the two programs before and after deployment, using mentoring, in-person and virtual meetings, art exhibitions, and a shared web portal.
- Evaluate how well the Polar STEAM program engages participants and the public, with evaluation led by the Science Education Resource Center.
More about the research
This program asks how bringing artists, writers, and teachers into polar research settings can widen the public's understanding of the polar regions and the people who work there. It joins science, technology, engineering, arts, and mathematics, an approach known as STEAM.
Why it matters
Polar science addresses urgent global problems, but its findings often stay within research circles. By sending teachers, artists, and writers to the Arctic and Antarctica, this program could help students, museum visitors, and the wider public understand polar environments and research. It also aims to give teachers new ways to combine art and science in their lessons.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Ross Virginia
Dartmouth College, NH·Education Research
Immerse U.S. high school, undergraduate and graduate students in field-based polar science at Kangerlussuaq and Summit Station, Greenland, through the Joint Science Education Project with Greenlandic, Danish and Indigenous partners.
Vaughn Cooper
University of Pittsburgh, PA·Ecology & Evolution
Train 18 middle and high school teachers in research on how Pseudomonas bacteria evolve during biofilm growth, using genome sequencing to find mutations that cause distinct colony shapes.
Jan Yow
University of South Carolina-Columbia, SC·Education Research
Develop 16 STEM teacher leaders from five South Carolina school districts through a three-year Ed.D. STEM program and a two-year Action Research Implementation program.
The school
Oregon State University: 29 labs on PI Pages, $372M a year on research, 238 research doctorates a year.
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