Projects and Initiatives

Science of Smart Cities

In summer 2012, the Center will launch Science of Smart Cities, a program for 30 rising 7th and 8th grade students selected through their participation in other NYU-Poly programs.  Supported by the Deutsche Bank Americas Foundation, this full-time, 4-week program will serve 30 young people from central Brooklyn.

Based on a custom curriculum designed by two NYU-Poly engineering and mathematics students and a student from NYU’s Steinhardt School of Education, this activity-based, engaging summer experience will teach the underlying scientific and engineering concepts and principles that will drive how cities meet challenges like energy use and transportation to create sustainable urban centers.

Iridescent Learning

With support from an innovative family science-teaching program, Iridescent Learning, the Center sponsored two NYU-Poly graduate engineering fellows. These fellows worked with Iridescent staff to design and deliver several week-long family science classes at the organization’s Bronx location throughout the fall of 2011.  

Expanding and leveraging Iridescent’s program model, NYU-Poly fellows are teaching a course in the spring 2012 semester in family science education at NYU-Poly.  As part of the course, the 12 students taking the class will design and deliver family science lessons of their own, reaching hundreds of additional young people and their parents and caregivers with the fun and excitement of science learning.

Head Start

In collaboration with early education faculty at NYU’s Steinhardt School of Education and the Bedford-Stuyvesant Early Childhood Development Corporation, NYU-Poly faculty and students are working with a group of Head Start teachers to enhance STEM content in their classrooms and provide new opportunities for science learning and inquiry for our youngest scientists and engineers.