9th Grade MESA Students at the WSU Vancouver Campus
NW Noggin is a volunteer-run organization that partners with schools and other organizations in the Portland/Vancouver area to deliver neuroscience curriculum to students of all ages. NW Noggin believes that all children are capable of understanding how the brain works and can benefit greatly from the knowledge. Noggin teaches children about how the brain processes information from our senses and constructs our view of the world, how our experiences shape our beliefs and understanding, and how medical and non-medical drugs affect the brain. One of the primary objectives of NW Noggin is to make this technical information more accessible and appealing to children of all backgrounds. To do this, Noggin integrates art projects into each lesson that help explain the material. More information about NW Noggin can be found here: NWNoggin.org
The arts integration Noggin does is part of a larger movement in the academic world called "STEAM". The STEAM movement is pushing for the inclusion of the arts in traditionally scientific areas of study, also called the "STEM" fields (i.e. science, technology, engineering, and mathematics). One of the main hopes of this movement is to get more girls and ethnic minorities excited about STEM so that they will interested in and qualified for the high-demand careers in the STEM fields when they grow up.
More info about the STEAM movement can be found here: STEMtoSTEAM.org
A Typical Day at WSU Vancouver