After Seeing 'STARs' Mendham Teacher Returns to Class

While students and colleagues were out enjoying their summer vacations, Denise Magrini, a teacher at Mountain View Middle School was out seeing STARs.

The Mendham teacher will return to the classroom with new and exciting tools to 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.

Magrini was part of an exclusive group of 20 teachers from across the country selected to participate in the prestigious “Siemens Teachers as Researchers” (STARs) fellowship program that allowed her to spend time engaged in an immersive research program at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) in Richland, Wash.

As part of an elite fellowship program arranged by the Siemens Foundation, Discovery Education, Oak Ridge Associated Universities and the College Board, Magrini worked with a team of scientists and fellow educators to look at soil samples from the Coyote Canyon Mammoth Site.

STARs 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 Siemens Foundation, Discovery Education and their partners developed the STARs fellowship to invigorate teachers by immersing them in authentic research alongside some of the country’s brightest scientific minds. The program’s goal is to allow some of the nation’s brightest teachers to come together and collaborate with each other in order to help inspire their students to pursue STEM education and careers.

"We hope that Denise along with all of the other STARs participants will walk away from this experience with new insights into STEM education that can be carried over into the classroom to inspire a future generation of young STEM professionals,” said Jeniffer Harper-Taylor, president of the Siemens Foundation. 

"STARs is an integral part of the Siemens Foundation’s larger effort to improve and support STEM education and we are proud of not only the resources that the program provides, but also the incredible passion of each of its participants.”

At the PNNL, Magrini and her colleagues worked with scientist George Last to conduct XRF analyses on soil samples from the Coyote Canyon Mammoth Site. The teachers worked on site in the field with a highly specialized machine that involved radiation training and also worked in the PNNL lab preparing samples for elemental analyses.

“I am extremely grateful to be chosen as a Siemen’s STAR fellow,” Magrini said. “As a mother of middle-school-aged children myself, I couldn't think of a better way to model for them, as well as my students, that as citizens we have an obligation and responsibility to the global community to study and solve today’s most challenging problems like clean energy and climate change through STEM education.”.

In addition to their research, Magrini 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.