News

As part of CREWS' focus on providing professional development opportunities for students and faculty on the project, Jessie Herbert-Meny from spectrUM Discovery Area presented a virtual Role Models Matter training in early March. The training focused on three main areas to effectively engage public audiences: 1) How people learn in informal settings, 2) Components of a successful role model event, and 3) Facilitation pointers.

Montana NSF EPSCoR welcomes Montana State University student Sierra Fisher-Dkyman, who is now serving as an intern for the Montana Girls STEM Collaborative. Sierra is a senior at MSU studying Elementary Education, Special Education, and Spanish. Here are Sierra's words:

Meet Dr. Arica Crootof, Assistant Professor of Environmental Sustainability at the University of Montana Western and a member of the EPSCoR Track 1 research team. In this interview, Dr.

A new exhibit at Bozeman’s American Computer & Robotics Museum highlights the dynamic field of remote sensing and features remote sensing applications and instruments developed and used by Montana NSF EPSCoR researchers and industry partners.

Montana NSF EPSCoR helped support STEM Summit 2019, a statewide gathering that welcomed 165 representatives from education, industry, government and non-profits to discuss how to advance science, technology, engineering and mathematics learning in Montana. A report outlining findings from the event is now available for free download, and the data will be used to guide new Montana NSF EPSCoR efforts in STEM learning and workforce development.

Meet Ann Marie Reinhold, an assistant research professor at Montana State University in Bozeman (Department of Land Resources and Environmental Sciences) and a member of the EPSCoR Track 1 research team. She is a hydroecologist and interdisciplinary scientist who works with the Judith River Watershed team.

Water Quality Basics, a free online course highlighting key issues and topics on water quality, is now available as part of Montana NSF EPSCoR's "CREWS-U" professional development program. The noncredit course explores water quality issues, including primers on the hydrologic cycle and determinants of water quality. It will address key issues for water quality, such as contaminant degradation and movement in the environment, iron and manganese, hard water, fire in the watershed, animal feeding operations, nutrients, wastewater treatment and emerging contaminants.

Engineer Erika Espinosa-Ortiz received a seed grant from Montana NSF EPSCoR in February and quickly jumped into sharing her work with students and teachers via a new outreach project called CREWS Junior Researcher (CREWS is the acronym for the current Track 1 project: The Consortium for Research on Environmental Water Systems).

Meet Megan Moore, a PhD student at the University of Montana (Department of Society and Conservation) and a member of the EPSCoR Track 1 research team. She is a research assistant with the Upper Clark Fork River team and is also a human geographer studying the Anaconda Co. Smelter Superfund site.

Field Notes on our Virtual Meeting at NSF These notes describe our team’s experience switching on short notice from an in-person meeting to a virtual meeting at NSF. We are sharing these informal notes in the event that it helps others prepare for similar changes. Please send any questions to info@mtnsfepscor.org.