River Ridge Teacher Participates In STEM Fellowship Program

Staff Report

Judi Haggerty, a teacher at River Ridge High School in Woodstock, has returned to the classroom this year a ‘STAR’ after participating in the prestigious “Siemens Teachers as Researchers” (STARs) fellowship program.

Haggerty was part of an exclusive group of 40 teachers from across the country selected to learn new and exciting tools that will help her students gain a more practical understanding and stronger appreciation for the use of science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) concepts in their daily lives. The program allowed her to participate in an immersive research program at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Oak Ridge, Tenn.

Sponsored by the Siemens Foundation and administered by Discovery Education, and the Oak Ridge Associated Universities, Haggerty took part in an elite fellowship program and worked with a team of respected research scientists and fellow educators on a project exploring nanoscale energy materials.

The STARs program is part of the Siemens STEM Academy, a premier online professional development community for STEM educators that encourages and celebrates excellence in STEM education through a wide offering of innovative resources, webinars and networking opportunities.

The program’s goal is to invigorate teachers by immersing them in authentic research alongside some of the country’s brightest scientific minds and enable collaboration to help inspire their students to pursue STEM education and careers. Siemens STEM Academy amplifies Siemens Foundation and Discovery Education’s commitment to building the future pipeline of STEM graduates prepared to succeed in the global economy.

“The Siemens STARs experience has forever changed me as a teacher,” Haggerty stated. “I have come back into the classroom with a new sense of how interconnected the subjects in STEM are. I am striving to make every student more involved in the STEM field where they can achieve anything they have the passion to go after, just as I did with the Siemens STARs Fellowship.”

While at Oak Ridge, Haggerty and her fellow educators worked with scientist Ho-Nyung Lee on a project designed to explore the structural and physical properties of electronic and energy materials including insulators, metals, and high-Tc superconductors.

In addition to their research, Haggerty and the other STARs fellows were involved in a number of seminars aimed at helping them effectively incorporate research into their classrooms. Each teacher also received a grant to purchase equipment and/or supplies for their classroom to use in the coming school year.

Following the programs, the Fellows will serve as ambassadors in their schools and communities as they continue working together on various STEM projects and empowering their peers with the tools and knowledge gained at the STARs program. The hope is that these teachers will then bring the experience back into their classrooms and inspire students to pursue opportunities in STEM-related fields.