A recent CIRCLE Seed Grant from MSU brought together a team of local K-12 teachers and KBS LTER researchers to develop a replicable schoolyard experiment.
Scientific discovery is often associated with remote field sites or specialized laboratories, but it can also begin in familiar places – like schoolyards.
At the KBS LTER site, researchers study ecosystems using a combination of observation, experiments, modeling, and synthesis. Equally important is how this work is conducted: through long-term collaboration. As 1 of 26 LTER Network sites across the country, KBS LTER scientists coordinate across sites to share data and better understand environmental change.
Inspired by this collaborative model, researchers asked whether a similar approach could be applied in local schools. Schoolyards are often overlooked as ecological spaces, yet they offer meaningful opportunities for scientific investigation. Could teachers and students partner with scientists to carry out coordinated experiments across multiple schools, generating data that can be shared and compared?
Building off 26 years of collaboration between local teachers and KBS, support from the MSU CIRCLE Seed Grant Program allowed an interdisciplinary team to come together and tackle this question. KBS researchers, including Dr. Lauren Sullivan and Kara Haas, and four high school teachers used the one-year, $15,000 grant to work together through workshops and regular meetings to design outdoor STEM experiments. This collaboration produced four standardized research protocols to be launched during the 2026-2027 school year.
Each participating school will conduct the same experiments in its own setting, contributing to a shared dataset that captures ecological patterns across locations. The initial funding also helped secure additional support through a MiSTEM Network 3P grant from the Michigan Department of Labor and Economic Opportunity, along with continued funding from the National Science Foundation, which will enable the project to expand to more schools.
By linking classrooms through shared research, this initiative strengthens collaboration between scientists and educators while providing students with direct experience in ecological research.
“We were compelled to write for the CIRCLE grant because it would give us the time and opportunity to really think about how we wanted to create this experiment. The CIRCLE grant gave our team of scientists and educators the opportunity to dream big, reflect on our professional needs, and set goals together.” – Kara Haas, doctoral student in Curriculum, Instruction and Science Education at Michigan State University
“A facet of this work that I personally enjoyed was that the grant allowed our network to integrate ecological and social science to embrace scientific knowledge and affective awareness. It has been a unifying experience brought forward by horizontal leadership, ultimately working together to support teachers and students doing outdoor learning. Our co-developing ecological monitoring for schoolyards project highlights the benefits of engagement, learning, and collaboration.” – Melissa Frost, participating teacher (Buchanan High School)
Participating teachers and researchers include:
- Melissa Frost, Buchanan High School
- Rebecca Joyce, Kalamazoo Area Math and Science Center
- Nicole Karle, Three Rivers High School
- Torrey Wenger, Bloomingdale Public Schools
- Dr. Lauren Sullivan, Michigan State University, Dept. of Plant Biology and KBS
- Kara Haas, Michigan State University, Dept. of Teacher Education
- Ly Duong, Michigan State University, Dept. of Teacher Education
- Misty Klotz, Michigan State University, KBS
- Dr. Liz Schultheis, Michigan State University, KBS LTER