K-12 Teachers Explore Experiential Learning Through CMU Summer Camp
A new weeklong event brought K-12 teachers to Carnegie Mellon University’s campus to foster curiosity and discovery as they transform their students into future-ready innovators.
Hosted by CMU’s Leonard Gelfand Center for Service Learning and Outreach(opens in new window), the inaugural Teacher Summer Camp reflects Carnegie Mellon’s broader commitment to supporting K–12 educators and strengthening the region’s educational ecosystem. By investing in teacher professional development, CMU extends the impact of its expertise in learning science, technology, engineering, the arts and emerging fields such as artificial intelligence to classrooms across Pennsylvania and beyond.
The Teacher Summer Camp brought together 31 participants, most from across western Pennsylvania and two from Massachusetts, to interact with and learn from more than 30 CMU faculty, student and staff presenters throughout the week. Pittsburgh-based nonprofit Matt’s Maker Space(opens in new window) sponsored the camp and hosted sessions on two of the five days.
Teachers toured the university’s facilities, conducted experiments in CMU laboratories, explored the library’s special collections and took part in workshops in areas such as art, STEM and robotics. Many of the camp's sessions were held in the newly renovated(opens in new window) Posner Center for Special Collections(opens in new window).
“The most powerful tool we have at our disposal to make a real difference in regional education is through teacher professional development,” said Lindsay Forman(opens in new window), K-12 coordinator for the Simon Initiative(opens in new window), who organized the summer camp with Miriam Wertheimer(opens in new window), senior director of the Gelfand Center. “We can be incredibly nimble and provide really specialized translations of the innovative work happening here to teachers.”
Carnegie Mellon engages educators with training opportunities in many ways. Through the efforts of the Simon Initiative and other campus partners such as the Community-Based Work Coalition(opens in new window), teachers have opportunities to explore topics ranging from learning science and evidence-based instructional design to artificial intelligence in the classroom(opens in new window).
Faculty and staff offer a wide-range of professional development programs(opens in new window) such as the Summer Center for Climate, Energy, and Environmental Decision Making (SUCCEED)(opens in new window) and summer workshops for physics(opens in new window) and STEM educators, helping teachers bring cutting-edge research and hands-on learning approaches to their students.
Strengthening students’ learning foundations
In her address to the summer campers, Kate Barraclough(opens in new window), vice provost for education, recognized that the CMU community can share its capabilities to develop students’ learning foundations for future critical thinking and groundbreaking ideas.
“Every single day on this campus, we have brilliant, young students who do amazing things like engineering autonomous vehicles, creating art, delivering incredible performances, discovering new compounds, or thinking about expanding the bounds of artificial intelligence,” she said. “But the spark, the curiosity, the energy they bring doesn’t start at Carnegie Mellon. It starts with you and the work that you’re doing … we are the direct beneficiaries of all the amazing work that teachers do.”
Barraclough noted that CMU has spent decades at the forefront of learning science research(opens in new window), helping to define how educators use data, technology and cognitive science to improve learning outcomes.
Inspiring learning as creative play
Trish Callaway, a preschool teacher at Shadyside Presbyterian Church Nursery School in Pittsburgh, attended the summer camp alongside her daughter, Michelle Callaway, a science teacher in Boston, Massachusetts.
Both enjoyed a session in game design led by Rotem Guttman(opens in new window), a Ph.D. student with Carnegie Mellon’s Human-Computer Interaction Institute(opens in new window) and Center for Transformational Play(opens in new window) in the School of Computer Science(opens in new window). He challenged the teachers to create games using only plastic forks and everyday objects they had with them.
“The games that he brought in this particular session reminds me how important playing with something, hands-on learning, is serious, essential — and really fun too,” Trish Callaway said.
Recalling a quote by educator and television personality Fred Rogers, she said it reminded her that “for children, play is learning,” and teachers have a responsibility to carry that forward. She was grateful for Carnegie Mellon’s efforts to emphasize those concepts with professional development.
“What a perfect place to share with and support the people planting seeds so they can go on to change the world,” Trish Callaway said. “It’s a growth process, and we’re all a community of learners.”
STEM learning activities energize teachers
Other sessions included connecting with nature at the Highmark Center for Health, Wellness and Athletics(opens in new window), flying drones from the Carnegie Mellon Robotics Academy(opens in new window) and soldering in CMU’s TechSpark(opens in new window) makerspace.
During one “kitchen chemistry” session, Subha Das(opens in new window), associate professor of chemistry and director of ChemZone outreach(opens in new window), emphasized connecting food and other relatable materials to science learning.
For one experiment to explain molecular energy, Hannah Jo Williams, who is transitioning from teaching second grade at Pittsburgh Urban Christian School to the Falk Laboratory School at the University of Pittsburgh in the fall, was paired with Kris Hupp, director of technology and instructional innovation at Cornell School District in Coraopolis, Pennsylvania.
In the Doherty Hall lab, the two used metal salts in flame tests to see the variety of colors produced when certain metal ions are present. Hupp held the butane lighter while Williams held the small scoop of each salt over the flame.
“A bright one!” she said after testing lithium chloride. Williams appreciated how the sessions allowed the teachers to see how “to be curious and wonder and have fun, then translate that into your teaching practice.”
With CMU’s help, teacher training advances AI course
Prior to the summer camp, Hupp worked with Forman on an artificial intelligence pathway for teacher professional development at Cornell, which has 550 students in the district.
“CMU has offered a wide variety of support for our school over the years, everything from instructional support to connecting with the latest research,” Hupp said. “It is nice that CMU is willing to take the time and resources to help our students.”
Last school year, with Forman’s help, Cornell teachers developed an AI literacy course for the district’s seventh-grade students that will be offered in the fall.
“She helped cater it to our district and develop AI-resistant strategies for assessing students’ learning versus the AI models,” Hupp said.
Similarly, Hupp plans to take the ideas and information shared during Teacher Summer Camp back to Cornell, especially its makerspaces, which students have used for the past 15 years.
“It’s a good opportunity to learn what other people are doing and how we can apply it at Cornell,” he said. “I’m really looking for new ways to think about things and do them differently.”
CMU alumni-led nonprofit benefits learners as a family tribute
To emphasize design thinking and maker learning, CMU’s Leonard Gelfand Center for Service Learning and Outreach collaborated with Pittsburgh-based nonprofit Matt’s Maker Space.
Led by CMU alumni David and Noelle Conover(opens in new window), the organization named in honor of their late son, Matt Conover, has helped open more than 60 makerspaces across southwestern Pennsylvania since 2016.
“Every day the teachers created things aligned with not only the maker principles of Matt’s Maker Space, but also the maker, tinkerer, entrepreneurial mindset and approach of CMU,” said Lindsay Forman, who co-led the Teacher Summer Camp.
