Do you like the idea of including engineering education in the classroom but are overwhelmed by perceived obstacles? Christine Cunningham has worked with hundreds of elementary and middle school educators to develop strategies to overcome those hurdles. Join us to learn how to find the time, prepare materials, and manage student expectations while getting tips on how to handle a diverse array of ideas, grade effectively and make sure that no one gets left behind. Joining her is Nancy Yocom de Romero, a middle school educator, who was one of the first teacher collaborators with Engineering is Elementary.

Dr. Christine Cunningham is an educational researcher who works to make engineering and science more relevant, accessible, and understandable, especially for underserved and underrepresented populations. A vice president at the Museum of Science, Boston since 2003, she is the Founding Director of Engineering is Elementary™, a groundbreaking project that integrates engineering concepts into preschool, elementary, and middle school curriculum and teacher professional development.

Christine is a Fellow of the American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE) and received the ASEE K-12 and Pre-College Division Lifetime Achievement Award in 2015. She was awarded the 2014 International Society for Design and Development in Education Prizer, the 2015 IEEE Pre-University Educator Award and, in 2017 her work was recognized with the prestigiuosHarold W. McGraw Jr. Prize in Education. Christine holds B.A. and M.A. degrees in biology from Yale and a PhD in Science Education from Cornell University.  She was a LinkEngineering Committee Member.

Christine is the author of the 2018 book Engineering in Elementary STEM Education: Curriculum Design, Instruction, Learning, and Assessment, published by Teachers College Press and the Museum of Science Boston.

Nancy Yocom de Romero has been an elementary school teacher in Framingham, Massachusetts for 18 years. She was a classroom teacher in a two-way bilingual program for 15 years and currently teaches in the Sage program, in which she works with students and teachers to promote abstract, higher-order thinking and creative problem solving in Barbieri and Brophy Schools, both of which are bilingual English/Spanish schools. Prior to that, Nancy taught in El Salvador, Central America.

More information on LinkEngineering's Video Conversation Series, which provides free online professional development, is available elsewhere on this site.