Tag: STEM Read
After surviving a crash course in comedy, a cohort of NIU researchers will perform their stand-up comedy talks on June 11 and 18. The STEM experts from NIU and Argonne National Laboratory have been working with Science Riot, a nonprofit dedicated to helping scientists harness the power of laughter to connect with broad audiences and...
Bringing books to life – transporting an author’s words and worlds from typewritten pages into physical spaces – marvelously rouses the passion for reading within young readers. Just imagine your excitement if you learned that Tad Lincoln had lost his famous father’s speech — and that it’s up to you to find the script in...
NIU’s STEM Read is taking advantage of a new partnership with WNIJ, northern Illinois’s public radio station, to share staff and faculty expertise through a new platform: the STEM Read podcast. The podcast, which debuted on Friday, Oct. 13, allows NIU faculty and staff to reach a wider audience of K-12 educators and librarians, as...
In National Book Award Winner M.T. Anderson’s latest satirical novel, Landscape with Invisible Hand, humans are invited to participate in a galactic economy but struggle to adjust to a market run by aliens and ruined by alien technology. Anderson’s books, such as Landscape, The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing and Feed, often use humor and...
On Monday, April 24, at 7:30 p.m., New York Times best-selling author Jeff VanderMeer will speak at the DeKalb Public Library. The talk, hosted by Northern Illinois University’s STEM Read and the Friends of the NIU Libraries, is free and open to the public. Jeff VanderMeer is the writer and editor of numerous books of speculative...
For NIU undergrad Hannah Carmack, working with the P-20 Center has been an exciting path to job skills and personal rewards. As a STEM Read program assistant, she does work that simultaneously touches people’s lives and prepares her for a job in publishing, her career of choice. STEM Read uses live and online programs to...
Gillian King-Cargile remembers well a phone call from an administrator at Sycamore High School, where she’d recently handed out free copies of a science fiction novel titled “The Maze Runner.” “You made a kid’s mom cry,” the caller told her. What? How? Was the plot objectionable? The subject matter? No, she was told, the mother...
All 7,500 participants in STEMfest 2015 had the opportunity to engage in a full day of hands-on fun exploring science, technology, engineering, and math. The sixth annual STEMfest included participants from more than 98 ZIP codes, 633 NIU volunteers and 85 exhibitors who offered more than 200 activities to explore. But many young attendees received...
Halloween might be over, but Northern Illinois University’s STEM Read will keep people screaming with “The Science of the Scare” at the Egyptian Theatre at 6 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 19. Horror fans are invited to participate in a variety of hands-on activities to learn more about the technology of haunted houses, the psychology of fear...
NIU’s annual STEMfest will once again dazzle and educate thousands of visitors of all ages to the Convocation Center from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday, Oct 17. This free, family-friendly festival, attended by nearly 7,500 people last year, celebrates innovations in the STEM fields (science, technology, engineering and math) and offers hundreds of hands-on...
Northern Illinois University Press and the NIU Center for P-20 Engagement are creating a series of STEM-based storybooks, the Stuffed Bunny Science Adventure Series, which will include a total of eight books to be published over the course of the next two years. The books in the series focus on the adventures of a toy...