BrainU: About the Project

The Beginning

From visiting classrooms for Brain Awareness Week, we became aware that teachers wanted to learn what neuroscience has uncovered about brain mechanisms of learning and memory.

2000-02: Brain Science on the Move

To meet this demand, funds were sought to develop the neuroscience teacher training project. We received sponsorship from Howard Hughes Medical Institute and Brain Science on the Move was born. Additional funding from the Minnesota Department of Higher Education: Eisenhower Professional Development Program, enabled delivery of the BrainU teacher professional development institutes by a team of scientists at the University of Minnesota Department of Neuroscience working with educators from the Science Museum of Minnesota.

2002-08: BRAIN to Middle Schools

When teachers requested more BrainUs, the Dept of Neuroscience and the SMM sought additional funding. Sponsored by NIH NCRR SEPA, the BRAIN to Middle Schools program expanded the BrainU institutes to a series of 4 weeks of workshops over 3 summers.

Bringing Resources, Activities, & Inquiry in Neuroscience to Middle Schools was designed to promote and facilitate inquiry-based learning in neuroscience among fifth to eighth grade students and their teachers. The project had three components:

BrainU - a series of teacher professional development workshops

Explain Your Brain - assembly, exhibit hall, and class activity programs for schools

Brain Trunk - neuroscience resource and materials trunk for classroom use

2009-2011: Changing Brains Through Inquiry, Not Drugs

This new program, sponsored by NIH NIDA SEDAPA, will train high school teachers in neuroscience and inquiry pedagogy emphasizing how the neurobiology of learning can be disrupted by drug abuse. BrainUs will be offered in summers of 2009 and 2010 and over a series of weekends in the academic years 2009-2010 in Winona, MN and 2010-2011 in Duluth, MN.