Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology

Good science outreach takes strong partnerships. The Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology’s public engagement efforts for local schools owe a great deal to Zanne Newman, the STEAM Instructional Coach at Franklin STEAM Academy in Champaign’s Unit 4 school district. At Franklin, she works with teachers to bring enriching activities, resources, and guest presenters into the classroom, including from the IGB and other University of Illinois partners, and focusing particularly on the sciences and the arts.

Newman found her way to her current role in a manner that is typical for her, by determinedly following her passion to encourage curiosity, learning, and accomplishment in those around her. She began her career as a professional fundraiser; in 2005, she shifted to teaching after being inspired by her experience volunteering in the classroom of one of her own children.

“When I moved to this town from California . . . I volunteered in my son's classroom, and I fell in love,” Newman said. “The teacher actually took me seriously. She gave me a real task: I worked with a little boy who needed help reading. After about three months of this I thought, I totally love this. I went back to school to become a teacher.”

A love of science had always been part of Newman’s ethos. During her first few years as a teacher, she came to appreciate more fully how broadly science appealed to her students, even those who struggled with other academic topics. 

“I never realized before, there are a lot of kids who are fascinated by things you wouldn't guess they are,” Newman said. “I believe there's no human that isn't fascinated by science. I think that we undersell that.”

Just as Newman increasingly trusted STEAM topics to spark student engagement, she also learned to trust her students to meet the open-ended nature of scientific inquiry with creativity and excitement. One of her noteworthy memories of teaching showcases how quickly and flexibly children are able to rise to meet a challenge when they are given both autonomy and support.

“I used to do a project where kids wrote books about animals. They did the research; they could pick whatever they wanted . . . for some reason I just couldn't figure out how to create biomes in my room from all the different animals they had chosen,” Newman recalled.  “I said to the kids, how can we organize this? And literally, in 45 minutes, we had five different biomes that made sense.”

After 12 years of classroom teaching at Champaign Unit 4 school district’s Stratton Academy and University Primary School in Champaign, Newman found herself again reaching for a new role, one that combined her skill sets and values from both fundraising and teaching. She was making a move from elementary to middle school teaching, and arrived at Franklin STEAM Academy Middle School in Unit 4 just as they were receiving a federal Magnet Schools Assistance Program grant. She was hired to be a magnet site coordinator of the grant and develop a schoolwide STEAM program for Franklin.

In this role, Newman began to work on the types of initiatives that she still pursues today, connecting students and teachers with resources to make STEAM topics a prominent and integrated aspect of the school’s curriculum. As she built partnerships with local organizations including the University of Illinois to connect with programs and experts to visit the school, she discovered the IGB. The connection quickly grew into a working relationship that has yielded a wealth of science engagement opportunities for students at Franklin and beyond.

“I'm not a scientist, and just having partners like the IGB outreach group to think things through for us has been really helpful,” Newman said. "Going into the wet lab, doing chlorophyll extractions . . . it's really hard at school, because a lot of my teachers aren't scientists per se. To do that kind of the really cool molecular work, it’s harder to do, so that stuff doesn't happen,” without external support from partners, she said.

Newman continues to draw on her own creativity and her skill at connecting people as she works with the IGB to bring genomic content to students and families, including through programs such as the most recent iteration of the Pollen Power summer day camp and the STEAM TRAIN after school club that have become staple programs for IGB outreach. One of her favorite things about this type of scientific programming is, again, how it grants autonomy to students to follow their curiosity; STEAM TRAIN, in particular, is designed around the premise of supporting middle schoolers to select their own research priorities and conduct year-long projects in near-peer mentored groups.

“So much of what a kid does is scripted by the curriculum or the teacher, and having free choice is a really cool thing. Kids have things they are fascinated by,” Newman said. "Watching kids think things through and having an opportunity just to try whatever—I think that's been so valuable.”