Outreach

COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT
 

WE CONNECT with our community by sharing academic opportunities, support, and programming to show the steps to higher education for those underrepresented on university campuses.

Linking Southwest Heritage through Archaeology is a partnership with the UA School of Anthropology and the National Park Service. This opportunity for 10-12 Tucson area high school students and 1-2 Tucson area high school counselors invites participants to learn more about their own local Hispanic and Native American heritage through exploring historic and pre-European archaeological and cultural sites throughout the southwest and Arizona. Participants go to various national parks, heritage parks, museums, archaeological labs, and an archaeological dig. Participants will create a digital story map embedded with images and videos as they uncover their own local heritage story. Are you a Tucson high school counselor or student interested in becoming a part of our program? Read more information about our program, our approach, and our teaching team.

UA Upward Bound is an evidence-based program which provides students with the social and academic capital building support necessary in their successful transition from high school into college. The project supports underrepresented, low-income, first-generation high school students through programming that provides students with personalized access to Academic Preparation & Field Research Activities, Access to Technology and Scientific Tools, Financial Literacy and Planning, and Socio-cultural Literacy to make higher education a reality for these under-served populations. Upward Bound is proud to welcome the Beautiful Patterns program from MIT to our campus in summer 2019.

Download the curricula for this one-week immersion institute empowering incoming 9th grade students to view their high school experience as a pathway to college and university.  A final outcome of the institute will be the design of a personalized, extensive four-year high school plan that addresses coursework, clubs, summer programs, and when to start thinking about specific universities.

 

WE CONNECT with our community by collaborating with community partners, offering education-specific skills through internships and providing education resources.

Here's an opportunity to learn more about education outside of the classroom — and get paid internships at the same time! Lindsey Interns build leadership and management skills through real-world experience in public outreach programs, museums, non-profits, and various centers in Tucson area schools. Funding is awarded per semester and varies based on graduate or undergraduate internships.

Our students' interests are varied, and the internship opportunities are just as diverse. For your convenience, we've listed some community organizations that may interest undergrad internship seekers.

In partnership with faculty at the UA College of Engineering and UC San Diego, this NSF funded program for STEM majors places them in an 8-week summer research experience which is followed by support through fall 2020 and spring 2021. Support provides faculty mentoring, continued research work, and have all expenses paid to attend up to two professional conferences. Research is focused on sound waves and phononics computational modeling. Selected students will be awarded funds for their summer and semester activities equaling $9000.00.

The STEM Learning Center serves as a hub of Science,Technology, Engineering and Math resources. It acts both as an outreach facility and in support of improved STEM learning on campus and in the greater community. The College of Education serves as one of the center's four campus partners.

Attention Community Agencies! Are you looking for a resource to help structure your experience with UA student volunteers? Here is a tool that helps build leadership qualities while undergraduates students are volunteering at non-profit organizations. College students often seek work and volunteer experiences that will help them develop their career skill sets. This resource provides the ability for your agency to tailor experiences to help your volunteers improve leadership skills.

Hosting mentors at your school is a fulfilling experience. Bringing college students together with your secondary students can have long-lasting impact that positively influences your students. The handbooks are meant to help you coordinate how best to host the mentors at your school. The handbooks outline how to choose your coordinator, how to prepare orientation materials for the mentors, as well as provide you with reproducibles for use by your coordinator. 

Find lesson plans designed by teachers to be easily infused into existing curriculum maps. The lessons are primarily focused on Fire Ecology using dendrochronology to uncover the story of forest fires. Be on the lookout for climate lessons and small video film series that complement the lesson plans.  Check out Fires of Change, University of Arizona Museum of Art installation from 2016.

 

WE CONNECT with our community by partnering with regional schools through mentoring programs and by modeling evidence-based practices in science, literature, and math.

Project SOAR (Student Outreach, Access, & Resiliency) is a service-learning experience that routinely places over 100 UA undergraduate mentors in under-resourced, public middle schools in the Tucson area. These students are enrolled in either HED 350 or HED 397B, both of which examine issues of college access. This College of Education program is housed within the Center for the Study of Higher Education in the Department of Educational Policy Studies and Practice. Download our Fact Sheet.

Native SOAR (Student Outreach, Access & Resiliency) is a two-tiered mentoring service-learning program between the UA’s College of Education and local Native American middle and high school students in Southern Arizona. Undergraduate students enroll in a three-unit class, HED 397C, and learn about the pedagogy and skills to mentor Native American students. In the program’s two-tier mentoring model, the undergraduates are also mentored by current UA graduate students and professionals from within the Tucson and University community. 

A partnership between the Tucson Unified School District and the College of Education, the Cooper Center educates thousands of school children and adult chaperones, educators, pre-service teachers, and volunteers each year about ecology, science, and the beauty and wonders of our home, the Sonoran Desert.

AILDI offers summer programs focused on Indigenous languages.

Worlds of Words is an international collection of children's and adoloscent literature used for teaching and research. WOW hosts courses for education majors, regular open reading hours, and professional workshops. WOW offers teacher resources to globalize the common core, and provides story boxes and book kits on language and culture. It’s a magical place — a place where lives change, thanks to the power of books.

Are you interested in becoming a teacher? Do you want to make a difference in the lives of Southern Arizona public school students? Become an Arizona Teaching Fellow! Arizona Teaching Fellows is a unique program offered through a partnership between the University of Arizona and Southern Arizona school districts. 

Check out university-wide outreach programming.