Informal Science Education Projects

Teresa MacDonald, Associate Director of Informal Science Education, is interested in evolution education and physics education. Her work includes the development of education programs and resources as well as research and evaluation in evolution education, particularly communicating and teaching about phylogeny.

Natural History Mystery

An IMLS-funded project with the University of California Museum of Paleontology to create an immersive educational puzzle hunt game exploring museum exhibits on the topic of evolution and common ancestry using zoonotic disease scenario.

Natural History Mystery Logo with Dyche Hall in background, a lock and science icons

STEM Escape

National Institute of Health (NIH) SEPA-funded project with the University of California Museum of Paleontology to design and evaluate a bilingual English/Spanish pop-up science escape room, VENOMventure | aVENONOtura, to teach evolutionary relationships, engage critical thinking and collaboration skills and more.

VENOMventure logo with green, leafy question mark and shadow

Microbes on the Move

An NSF EPSCoR-funded project for a traveling pop-up museum with natural history collections and hands-on activities to teach about microbial diversity. Additional NSF funding supported a bilingual English/Spanish version that traveled to Salina, Dodge City and Garden City over the 2022 summer.

Microbes on the Move bilingual logo featuring illustrations of diverse microbes

Pop-Up Paleontology

A donor funded project for a traveling pop-up museum with KU natural history collections and hands-on activities to teach families across Kansas about paleontology.

Round green emblem for Pop Up Paleontology program with a tree of life with many species.

The Tree Room

An IMLS-funded National Leadership project to create a tree portal website with learning research, curriculum materials, and guides and tools on how to effectivelyuse and teach about the tree of life for teachers and museum professionals.

The Tree Room logo in blue with lines representing species trees and across the top: an amoeba, a rat, a butterfly, a leaf

Fish Tree of Life

NSF-funded curriculum unit on fishes, the evidence used to study their relationships, and interpreting phylogenetic trees, and an online module featuring stories about the relationships, shared characters and evolution of fishes.

An illustration of a green fish representing the Fish Tree of Life project

Adventures at Nanoscale

An NSF ISE-funded animated video following the adventures of youth characters and their subatomic alter-egos as they explore how electrical conductors and high temperature superconductors work.

Two young anthropomorphic superconductor creatures flying with helmets and googles on, looking happily at eachother

Quarked! Adventures in the Subatomic Universe

Collaborative particle physics education project with multiple funders (NSF, Kauffman Foundation, EPSCoR) that developed science education school programs at the museum and a national website with interactive games, lesson plans, and other educational resources.

Quarked logo with a cartoonish illustration of a "Proton" ultra modern spaceship that looks a bit like a car