Biomimicry Education: A sy-STEM-atic approach
This innovation also has a Project Page where you can read more about its latest progress.
Go to Project: Biomimicry Education: A sy-STEM-atic approach.
We want to inspire the next generation of world-builders – engineers, research scientists, chemists, architects, city planners, etc. — to borrow nature’s successful design strategies, developed over 3.8 billion years, in creating products and processes for a sustainable future. We envision a world where the methods of biomimicry are used to seek out innovative strategies evident in nature and apply the principles at work to our own human way of life on earth.
We are aiming to develop a lively, engaged, committed, and growing network of educators at all levels of schooling who use biomimicry to engage students in learning about science, technology, engineering and mathematics, and to inspire students and teachers alike to learn from, value, and conserve our greatest teacher - Nature.
About You
About You
First Name
Sam
Last Name
Stier
About Your Organization
Organization Name
The Biomimicry Institute
Organization Website
Organization Phone
406-728-4134
Organization Address
140 South 4th West, #2, Missoula MT
Organization Country
United States, MT, Missoula County
Country where this project is creating social impact
United States, XX
Is your organization a
Non‐profit/NGO/citizen sector organization
How long has your organization been operating?
More than 5 years
The information you provide here will be used to fill in any parts of your profile that have been left blank, such as interests, organization information, and website. No contact information will be made public. Please uncheck here if you do not want this to happen..
Innovation
Entry Form title
Biomimicry Education: A sy-STEM-atic approach
What change do you want to bring to the world?
We want to inspire the next generation of world-builders – engineers, research scientists, chemists, architects, city planners, etc. — to borrow nature’s successful design strategies, developed over 3.8 billion years, in creating products and processes for a sustainable future. We envision a world where the methods of biomimicry are used to seek out innovative strategies evident in nature and apply the principles at work to our own human way of life on earth.
We are aiming to develop a lively, engaged, committed, and growing network of educators at all levels of schooling who use biomimicry to engage students in learning about science, technology, engineering and mathematics, and to inspire students and teachers alike to learn from, value, and conserve our greatest teacher - Nature.
What are the primary activities of your project?
Our project connects K-12 students and teachers to the fascinating world of biomimicry. We do this in several synergistic ways: (1) we create totally original lesson plans that transform how students see the world and what they understand is possible. For example, we developed a chemistry lab that allows students to see first-hand how concrete can be created the way corals create it: at ambient temperatures, without mining limestone or emitting 5-7% of the world’s global greenhouse emissions. This biomimetic technology is being developed by several corporations in the U.S. and Canada. In this way, our lesson plans - downloadable for free from our website – help educators to bring the most important, innovative and exciting STEM-relevant biomimetic research into high school, middle school, home school, and college environments. (2) We are piloting a project to match high school teachers with graduate students doing cutting-edge STEM-relevant biomimetic research. For instance, with partners at the University of Akron, Ohio, local area high school teachers receive a stipend to work through the summer in the labs of graduate students doing research on everything from spider silk and artificial muscles to gecko-inspired, non-toxic adhesives. Then, these teachers bring this information back to their students, all the while working with TBI on lesson plan development to build the library of biomimicry curricular materials offered to other educators around the world. (3) We host the Biomimicry Youth Challenge (BYC), a year-long challenge for K-12 students to practice biomimicry through hands-on invention, where students have the opportunity to interact in real-time with an online Biomimicry Mentors Network of students and experts from universities and innovative companies around the world.
What is innovative about your initiative? How is it a new contribution to the field?
Our disruptive innovation is access to original educational content about biomimicry and professionals doing biomimicry – it may sound simplistic, but it works. It works because improving STEM revolves around a key challenge: engaging students. Research shows the single biggest reason students drop out is because they feel classes are not interesting (The Silent Epidemic – Perspectives of High School Dropouts. 2006. Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation). Over 80 percent of respondents say there should be more opportunities for real-world learning. By connecting science to technology, and students to mentors, biomimicry is distinctive in connecting what students learn in classes to the real world around them.
Amory Lovins, widely considered among the world’s leading authorities on energy, says of biomimicry, “This will change your life. It has already changed mine. And it may save the world.” Emails we get every day, like this one from a young woman, also confirm the impact biomimicry can have on young people: “I recently graduated high school and until just a few days ago, I had no idea what path to pursue concerning college and career choices. But a few days ago, I read an article about how biologists use science to design and build solutions for real world issues, which led me to the area of biomimicry. How does one make a career out of biomimicry? Any information would be a great help. Thank you so much for your time and also for the work that you do!”
TBI is the only organization devoted to engaging students, at-risk to gifted, in STEM through biomimicry education.
What stage is your project in?
Operating for 1‐5 years
Tell us about the community that you engage? eg. economic conditions, political structures, norms and values, demographic trends, history, and experience with engagement efforts.
Our organization has been building connections to K-12 educators interested in the potential of biomimicry for four years. Over 100 educators have taken our online course in Biomimicry for Educators, and hundreds of K-12 educators have participated in our annual Education Summit over the last 5 years. Over 2300 educators have downloaded our curricula materials from our website. This network of educators includes teachers working in public and private schools, from rural communities and inner-cities, as well as home schooling parents, from the U.S., Mexico, India, etc. It is a growing global community of educators who see the value of biomimicry as a platform for STEM engagement.
Interestingly, biomimicry seems uniquely engaging to girls, that otherwise might lose interest in STEM. In part, this may be due to the fact that many of the most well-known biomimicry professionals are themselves women (e.g., Janine Benyus, Joanna Aizenberg (MIT), etc.). Biomimicry also seems to serve as a useful vehicle for drawing girls into STEM disciplines, particularly into engineering by way of biology; of STEM disciplines, biology is considered to be generally more attractive to girls (National Science Board 2006).
Through our work with their teachers, we aim to engage students from a variety of K-12 settings in the lifelong process of STEM learning, which is rooted in curiosity about the natural world and hope of a bright future. Biomimicry uniquely captures the imagination of children from a wide array of backgrounds with its respect for both the natural world and human ingenuity. The context of our project is primarily public K-12 classrooms, where innovation can be hard to support and sustain, and where real-world connections to mentors, professionals, and industry seem out of reach.
Despite strong stated interest from both sides, K-12 schools and STEM professionals often struggle to find substantive, effective, clearly-defined and sustainable ways for interaction to occur. In part, this is due to a simple need for "match-making;" teachers may not know who to call or where to turn to find interested mentors from the STEM community. Professionals and university educators may be willing to participate with K-12 students but might lack a point of entry. But even when teachers and professionals "find" each other, the mentoring relationship can be challenging to build and sustain. The mentorship relationship must be a defined one to be successful.
Our project increases the availability of STEM mentors through the online Mentors Network, and, even more importantly, the creative structure of the Challenge provides a framework for a mutually satisfying and educationally successful interchange. The Challenge creates an annual opportunity to provide guidance and "real-world" perspective, in a defined, yet individualized way.
The Biomimicry Youth Challenge Mentors Network connects students and teachers to the university and industry professionals who can provide expertise in content and methodology related to biomimicry, and also puts a “human face” on the often (to teachers and students) invisible worlds of the STEM professions. Students learn about the design process and fascinating science related to the natural world-- but of at least equal value is the opportunity to see themselves as future scientists, designers, and lifelong learners.
Share the story of the founder and what inspired the founder to start this project
After publishing 5 books on how organisms are exquisitely adapted to their environments, Janine Benyus began to wonder if inventors were looking to the natural world for innovative technological design ideas. In time, she filled a filing cabinet with examples of nature-inspired design, and knew she had the topic of her 6th book. In 1997, she published Biomimicry: Innovation Inspired by Nature, the seminal book exploring the idea that we can improve the performance and environmental sustainability of our technologies by looking to the natural world for design inspiration.
After each speaking engagement on Janine’s subsequent book tour, an excited line of parents and teachers wanted to talk with her about the value they saw in teaching kids about the fascinating world of nature-inspired innovation. These parent and teachers focused in on similar themes: amidst overwhelming bad news about the environment, and an educational system that increasingly seemed unable to engage young people, biomimicry was exciting, hopeful, and solution-oriented; it was an engaging vehicle through which to explore STEM topics with young people; and it helped connect young people to the outdoors, biology to technology, and the classroom to the real world. Ms. Benyus subsequently started TBI to help provide educators with educational resources for reaching young people about the fascinating world of biomimicry. Original curricula, mentorship networks, and project-based design challenges have since become a staple of how TBI engages young people in learning about the practice of biomimicry.
Social Impact
This Entry is about (Issues)
Please describe how your project has been successful and how that success is measured
There are 3 synergistic components to our project: (1) innovative STEM curricula, (2) teacher professional development pairing teachers with graduate students doing biomimetic research, and (3) the Biomimicry Youth Challenge and Mentorship Network.
We currently measure the success of our curricula (1) primarily through the number of teachers using it, and teacher feedback about our educational resources. We would like to refine these measures to include growth over time of curricula-users, and direct measures of student impact. To date over 2300 educators have downloaded our curricula so far, with new users added every day. Teacher feedback is overwhelmingly positive. For example, Karen Wallace, Director of Science Learning at the Buffalo Museum of Science and Professor at the Department of Learning and Instruction (University of Buffalo), wrote: "Having developed much curricula, I want to emphasize the curricula you have developed is really a big step above most curricula out there. I appreciate the thoroughness of directions, the variety of approaches and the good ideas... It has also jump started new ideas and approaches as well!" Others educators have said: “As a mother of three young girls, a trained architect and Montessori teacher long-since interested in the concept of biomimicry, I am THRILLED by this resource. Thank you very much.” And, “I see incredible potential in using Biomimicry to promote inquiry, STEM disciplines, and integration of disciplines across the curricula!”
Pairing teachers with graduate students doing biomimetic research (2) through our partnership with the University of Akron is in its pilot phase, and we intend to measure success by soliciting feedback from both teachers and graduate students, tracking lesson plan development by participating teachers and the adoption of these lesson plans into participating teachers’ classrooms.
The Biomimicry Youth Challenge (3) was piloted in 2010-2011 with a very small number of teachers and students in order to assess the project’s design and potential. The BYC was marketed only through our own mailing lists and no prizes were offered beyond recognition. In spite of this low-key launch, entries were submitted at each of the BYC’s three developmental levels, and reviewers were impressed with the quality of the submissions. Even more impressive was the feedback from teachers and students about the experience of learning about biomimicry and creating something new. One teacher reported, after working on a group project about biomimicry, “Biomimicry has influenced our entire community of students, teachers, and parents. We see the world differently now. We have learned to look to nature in concrete, scientific, and creative ways! This is not the end of our project. Biomimicry is now part of our vocabulary, our vision, and even our upper elementary science, writing, and music curricula.”
As the project grows, teachers and students will be asked to complete pre-and post- assessments of their knowledge of biomimicry and attitudes toward STEM disciplines. Biomimicry Mentors will also be asked to complete surveys of their attitude toward working with the K-12 audience.
How many people have been impacted by your project?
1,001- 10,000
How many people could be impacted by your project in the next three years?
More than 10,000
How will your project evolve over the next three years?
We will complete biomimicry-related curricula for chemistry, physics, biology, and general science classes for use in middle, high, home school, and college environments, and translate these into five major world languages. We intend on expanding the number of teachers participating in our paired teacher-graduate researchers initiative, and making this a national offering. We will publicize the BYC through national teacher organizations and offer prizes in each of the three developmental categories. If funded, we will also expand the scope of the BYC by adding the Biomimicry Mentors component. We hope to see the competition impact no fewer than 50 classrooms within 3 years (a potential audience of 1500 students).
Sustainability
What barriers might hinder the success of your project and how do you plan to overcome them?
Despite the widespread and growing interest in biomimicry, relatively few K-12 educators have received any formal training in the discipline. By connecting teachers to biomimicry experts and providing teachers with step-by-step methodology modules, we hope to overcome this challenge. We are simultaneously working to make our online teacher training course in biomimicry widely available for a nominal fee, and to increase its marketing in states where it is accredited or we are pursing accreditation (currently teachers can receive continuing education or clock hour credits in New York, Montana, Wyoming, and Arizona).
There are two major challenges in creating and disseminating curricula in biomimetic chemistry and other STEM areas. First, this work is truly pioneering, based on cutting-edge science research, and therefore requires significant investment of time and staff to develop it. We continually seek this type of general funding and thus far, our funders see the value in investing in the future of science education in this way.
Secondly, achieving adoption of our biomimicry-based lesson plans in chemistry classes, and eventually other science classes, will be a challenging process. State and national standards for science teaching do not currently include content or methodology related to biomimicry; yet industry and university scientists agree that biomimicry will only become more mainstream with time. We plan to continue to develop networks of support for this innovation, and invest in these early adopters in order to build the legitimacy and widespread adoption of biomimicry in STEM education for K-12 students.
Another potential challenge is to ensure that a wide variety of teachers from a wide variety of educational settings participate in the Biomimicry Youth Challenge. Our hope is that the highly virtual nature of the Challenge will in and of itself overcome potential geographic and barriers. However, an important part of our evaluation process will be determining whether our outreach efforts were successful in reaching a diverse audience, and altering our strategies as appropriate.
Finally, a potential barrier to successful Biomimicry Mentor relationship might be the perceived difficulty of building such a relationship. We believe that structured interactions, built in to the timeline of the Challenge, will greatly increase the likelihood of success.
Tell us about your partnerships
The Biomimicry Institute has worked closely with K-12 and university educators since its founding. Affiliate Universities which have made commitments to developing courses and/or degree programs in biomimicry are Ontario College of Art and Design, Universidad IberoAmericano in Mexico City, Arizona State University, Georgia Tech, and Cleveland Institute of Art. We have a budding relationship with Dr. Peter Niewiarowski in the biology department at the University of Akron, who approached us with the idea of pairing high school teachers with graduate students doing biomimetic research, a program he successfully piloted through the now-defunct National Science Foundation's GK-12 program. We have collaborated with a wide variety of formal and informal education institutions to create programs and materials related to biomimicry, including the San Diego Zoo, the Monterey Bay Aquarium, the Marine Science Institute, the Montreal Biosphere, the Center for Science and Industry in Ohio, and many more.
The Biomimicry Institute also has strong partnerships with a wide array of companies who have worked with us or our sister organization, the Biomimicry Guild, to use biomimicry in their product development process. The Guild's clients have included Nike, Boeing, DuPont, Coca-cola, the City of Seattle, General Electric, General Mills, Hewlett Packard, NASA, Levis, Interface, HOK, The American Institute of Chemical Engineers, The American Institute of Architects, and many others.
Current annual budget of project, in US dollars
$10,001‐50,000
Explain your selections
The Biomimicry Institute is funded by individual donations and grants from foundations and other organizations interested in Biomimicry, sustainability and education. Primary funders have included the Rocky Mountain Institute, the Kendeda Foundation, the Merck Family Foundation, and the Nathan Cummings Foundation.
How do you plan to strengthen your project in the next three years?
We expect that the world of biomimicry education in general will grow significantly for several reasons. First, biomimicry itself is a meme that is rapidly expanding into the global dialogue among educators, designers, sustainability professionals and policy-makers. Secondly, the increasing emphasis on STEM initiatives, including new curriculum standards in science related to engineering and design, make biomimicry a highly valuable tool for teachers looking to lead the way in these areas.
Our curricula development activities primarily require time and continued funding – there is more than enough content to serve as the basis for new, original curricula. Over the next 3 years, we will strive to continue what has thus far been successful efforts to fund The Biomimicry Institute’s central activities.
We will also work with Dr. Niewiarowski to raise funding beyond the pilot phase of the teacher-graduate student pairings to make this a national offering, where teachers and universities apply together to participate in the program.
To support the BYC as it grows, we are laying a foundation now for a self-sustaining network of biomimicry mentors by engaging both professionals and the University students (and faculty) who comprise tomorrow's professionals, increasing the likelihood that they will participate with K-12 students post-completion. Additionally, we are currently fundraising for an IT professional dedicated to building and maintaining the online tools and networks that will support the Biomimicry Education community, including the Mentors Network, as it grows.
Partnerships and Accountability
Please tell us more about how your partnership was formed and how it functions. What specific role does each partner play? What unique resources does each partner bring to the initiative?
Our project is by its very nature a collaboration between three distinct groups: The Biomimicry Institute, K-12 teachers, and professionals in STEM fields with expertise in biomimicry. For example, our chemistry curricula has involved education staff from TBI, biomimicry consultants from the Biomimicry Guild, university professor advisors, and high school chemistry teachers. Each informs lesson plan development, while TBI keeps the project on track to completion. Our teacher-graduate student program is a partnership with Dr. Niewiarowski at the University of Akron, who identifies willing teachers and students. TBI, in turn, works with these teachers on lesson plan development and training in biomimicry pedagogy.
The Biomimicry Institute provides the structure of the Biomimicry Youth Challenge, a year-long design challenge for students, and we provide expertise about biomimicry and teaching biomimicry in the classroom. We also provide curricula resources for teachers who wish to participate, and an online space for mentoring to occur. Finally, we make matches between local professionals and local teachers, and coordinate the Mentors Network (online) for mentoring at a distance.
Participating K-12 teachers provide enthusiasm for these projects-- and most importantly, they bring them to their students. They provide expertise about implementing lessons and activities with their particular population, and they support students as they learn about STEM through biomimicry.
Biomimicry Mentors provide their expertise about biomimicry and their own particular STEM discipline (they may be engineers, biologists, chemists, designers, or in another related profession.) They also provide an invaluable connection to the larger world of science, business and industry for students and teachers.
How are you building in accountability for students' successful STEM learning outcomes? Please provide a summary and examples.
This fall, we will begin a formal evaluation of our chemistry lesson plans in terms of student impact. Specifically, we wish to measure metrics related to content retention, but also career choice, and attitudes towards STEM in general, nature, and technology. We will work with Dr. Niewiarowski to undertake a similar evaluation of the classroom component of the teacher-graduate student program, and students participating in the BYC.
As importantly, we don’t just gather this feedback. At TBI, we have a four-year track record of actively re-evaluating each of our initiatives based on this kind of information in regular, quarterly strategic planning sessions, revising projects as needed.
Needs
Investment.
Please use this space to elaborate on your selection above and/or to add needs that may not be listed.
We are blessed to be working with great ideas and great people. We have also been fortunate to have had enough general purpose funds to have done four years of work – despite a weak economy. Our funders have realized the quality and value of our work. However, we need continued investment in order to maintain and expand our initiatives. Expanding general purpose funds is quite difficult, so we are consciously seeking project-specific funding – as in this proposal - to supplement our normal general purpose fundraising efforts, in order to have the opportunity to build further upon our successes.
Offers
Human Resources/Talent, Research/Information, Collaboration/Networking, Innovation/Ideas, Mentorship.
Please use this space to elaborate on your selection above and/or to add offers that may not be listed.
The Biomimicry Institute is a foremost thought leader in the new and fast-growing discipline of biomimicry, which many sustainability experts believe holds the most hope for humans to continue to thrive on the planet. We would be honored to learn of ways in which our expertise could be of service to your project.
 | 96 weeks ago Grace Decker said: In regard to your queston about the "part-time, long term" impact of our project, here is a quotation from our entry describing the ... about this Competition Entry. - read more > |
| 97 weeks ago jim brazell said: Great. What quotes in your application explain this? about this Competition Entry. - read more > |
| 97 weeks ago Grace Decker said: Hi Jim, Thank you for asking this question. You asked, where do we include the "part-time, full-time" component? While I'm not ... about this Competition Entry. - read more > |
| 97 weeks ago jim brazell said: Hi, Can you highlight for me where in your response you address the criteria for the award including the part-time, full-time ... about this Competition Entry. - read more > |
| 98 weeks ago Grace Decker updated this Competition Entry. |
| 98 weeks ago Grace Decker updated this Competition Entry. |
| 98 weeks ago Grace Decker updated this Competition Entry. |
| 99 weeks ago Grace Decker updated this Competition Entry. |
| 99 weeks ago Grace Decker updated this Competition Entry. |
| 99 weeks ago Grace Decker updated this Competition Entry. |
