COLLEGE PARK, Maryland — The University of Mount Union’s Dr. Richelle Teeling-Smith, assistant professor of physics and astronomy, has won the American Institute of Physics Megger’s Project Award for 2021. 

The William F. and Edith R. Meggers Project Award of the American Institute of Physics is a biennial award designed to fund projects for the improvement of high school physics teaching in the United States.

Teeling-Smith and her colleague Dr. Chris Orban, associate professor of physics at The Ohio State University, were awarded $12,500 in funding for the development of a high school data science curriculum that connects with physics, physical science and earth science. This work is part of the STEMcoding Project, which develops interactive coding activities for high-school STEM courses and provides training and instructional support for high school teachers. 

The development of this educational content builds on the data science activities and object-tracking software developed by Mount Union students through the summer 2021 Sit Lux Initiative at Mount Union.

In addition to the design of new educational content in data science, this grant funding will support Mount Union undergraduate research projects, training for local high school STEM teachers, scholarships for the STEMcoding Summer Camp for Middle and High School Girls at Mount Union in 2021 and the development of a “Data Camp” summer experience for high school students on Mount Union’s campus. 

To learn more about the STEMcoding Summer Camp, visit https://www.mountunion.edu/stemcoding. For more information about the AIP Megger’s Award, visit https://www.aip.org/aip/awards-and-prizes/meggers.