About CReST

Culturally Relevant STEM (CReST)

CReST develops rigorous and relevant learning supplements
with support curricula and modular kits for hands-on experiences and motivates community engagement via deep connections to museums and institutions where objects of historical, scientific, artistic, or cultural interests are curated and conserved. 

CReST increases the diversity, equity and interest of student learners in STEM  through structured, hands-on, and transdisciplinary learning experiences where students are exposed to artifacts that connect traditionally siloed educational experiences in science, social studies, and engineering in multiple days of instruction. 

Day 2 Sinopia. Students are thinking through a design and tracing their drawing with charcoal pencils on the first layer of plaster, known as sinopia. On day 3, the drawings will be covered by fine layer of malta known as intonachino.

The overarching research goal of CReST is that students from underrepresented minority groups in STEM will demonstrate a greater learning gain in STEM content along with
an increase in STEM self-efficacy and interest through completion of a STEM support curriculum that utilizes artifacts of cultural heritage associated with geographical, ethnological, or sociological elements of the minority group.

View Example Curriculum
View Instructional Resources

The Why 

There has been a continuous trend of decline in STEM interest which has presented an enormous concern to educational institutions, because fewer youth are choosing to major in scientific fields or even take science coursework at the high school or university level (Osborne et al., 2003).
 
This trend is also concerning to business and industry leaders, as well as government policy makers because declining numbers translate into fewer STEM professionals (Lacey Wright, 2009; Maltese Tai, 2011) at a time where an increasingly scientific and technological world requires more STEM oriented skills (NRC, 2011). Although these declines have been observed consistently for youth as a whole, they tend to be most pronounced for girls and particular non-white ethnic minorities (Catsambis, 1995; DeWitt, Osborne, Archer, Dillon, Willis, Wong., 2013; Jacobs, Davis-Kean, Bleeker, Eccles, Malanchuk, 2005; Walters Brown, 2005)
 

Culturally Relevant STEM (CReST). Students build, design, paint and restore their own fresco over the six-instructional days of CReST.