Mimi Recker
Utah State University, UT·Education Research
Many students in rural mountain towns grow up with little access to computers, internet bandwidth or technology-related jobs, even as those jobs become some of the best-paying careers available. Teachers in these communities may also lack training and resources in digital skills.
- Fields
Education Research
Computer Science
Social Science
- Topics
STEM education
computer science education
rural education
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Jul 2030
What they work on
- Evaluate whether courses in programming, technology design and sensor systems, built with local partners, help rural middle and high school students gain computing and STEM knowledge, using student assessments and analysis of student-created work.
- Assess how well students apply their new computing and disciplinary skills to scientific problem-solving, drawing on classroom observations and student artifacts.
- Measure whether apprenticeships, mentoring and coursework raise students' aspirations to pursue technology and computing careers, using surveys and interviews with youth.
- Examine how co-design among researchers, teachers, district leaders and community partners shapes the program's success, through observations of partnership meetings and interviews, to describe features useful to other rural communities.
More about the research
This project asks how schools, local businesses and community partners can work together to prepare rural middle and high school students for careers in technology and computing.
Why it matters
Students in rural, low-income mountain communities often miss out on technology and computing careers because of limited internet access, school technology and teacher training. This work could give school districts and local partners a tested model for teaching programming and sensor technology and linking students to apprenticeships and mentors, and may inform technology education in other rural communities.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Christopher Bogart
Carnegie Mellon University, PA·Education Research
Identify how early-career developers and experienced students divide programming work between themselves and AI tools, using interviews and direct observation to find patterns of overtrust, lost task awareness and skill decline.
Sheridan McNeil
North Dakota State University, ND·Education Research
Connect researchers spread across North Dakota through interdisciplinary research networks linking universities, regional colleges, and tribal colleges.
Nanette Marcum-Dietrich
Millersville University of Pennsylvania, PA·Education Research
Compare the original Shared Waters watershed curriculum with a version enhanced by augmented reality, mixed reality, simulations and computer modeling, measuring elementary students' environmental science learning in a quasi-experimental design.
The school
Utah State University: 5 labs on PI Pages, $451M a year on research, 126 research doctorates a year.
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