Northwestern University

Northwestern University, in collaboration with the Chicago Council for Global Affairs and the University of Chicago, is bringing together a group of leading experts in Chicago to participate in a forum to examine democracy and security in Nigeria. A series of public and private events is taking place across the city. A concluding forum, hosted in collaboration with the Shehu Yar’Adua Center, takes place in Nigeria.

Northwestern University’s Office of STEM Education Partnerships connects grade K-12 students and teachers with the world-class science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) resources of Northwestern University. This grant supports its FUSE program, designed by Northwestern to engage young people in STEM learning through easy-to-accomplish, hands-on, exploratory challenges. This grant will enable FUSE to augment its library of challenge-based sequences in areas such as robotics, electronics, and 3-D prototyping; implement new measures to assess the program’s impact on the development of 21st century skills; and develop a sustainability plan to meet growing national and international demand for FUSE programming.

The Institute for Policy Research is an interdisciplinary public policy research institute at Northwestern University. Among the many significant areas in which it conducts social science research are law enforcement, criminal justice, and the study of American policing. The Institute will use this grant to undertake a multi-year community survey as the second wave of analysis of the procedural justice reforms underway at the Chicago Police Department. Wesley Skogan, a preeminent scholar on police reform and the author of numerous studies of the Chicago Police Department, will lead the examination of the new model of policing for Chicago.

Northwestern University, in co-production with German Camera Productions, will produce the documentary film Saving Mes Aynak, directed by Brett Huffman, about a team of international archaeologists racing to excavate the ancient Afghan city of Mes Aynak before a Chinese mining company destroys it to create an open-pit copper mine. The film follows the experiences of Afghan and international archeologists, the local Afghans, mining company officials, and activists.

Northwestern University’s Office of STEM Education Partnerships supports grade K-to-12 students and teachers by connecting them with the world-class science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) resources of Northwestern University. It will use this grant to help bring to scale the FUSE project, an effort to engage young people in STEM fields through easy-to-accomplish, hands-on exploratory challenges. Northwestern will focus on increasing the number of challenge-based sequences, in areas such as robotics, electronics, and 3-D prototyping, to easily engage a young person in a continuum of STEM learning from novice to expert over the course of a year.