In the fall of 2018, the Pell Institute for the Study of Opportunity in Higher Education of the Council for Opportunity in Education (COE) was awarded a 1.2 million dollar National Science Foundation Grant under the NSF iTest Designing and Testing (DTI) Program (Grant #1759163). The partners in the grant were: the UMass Lowell Climate Change Initiative, Rutgers University, Pathlight Associates, The Waters Center for Systems Thinking, and pilot site Upward Bound Programs at the University of Georgia, University of Massachusetts-Boston, University of Kansas; Family Centered Education Agency-Chicago; and Weatherford College-Texas.
The iStronG (Inclusive, Strong, and Green) project goal was to develop, implement, and research the impacts of a systems thinking and climate change curriculum on underrepresented students in STEM. Administrators and instructors from five Upward Bound (UB) sites piloted both in-person and virtual iterations of the curriculum from 2019 to 2021, reaching about 200 TRIO UB students.
Structured Participatory Curriculum Development Process. For this project, we intentionally pursued a partnership curriculum development process that involved subject matter experts working with Upward Bound projects staff and students to develop the curriculum. Using a participatory action research framework, the team successfully piloted and iteratively tested and improved the curriculum with input from UB teachers and students over three summers (2019, 2020, 2021). UB teachers were made Curriculum Team members. Students provided feedback through focus groups and student surveys.
For more information, contact Maggie Cahalan via email at margaret.cahalan@pellinstitute.org
The Pell Institute


Senior Researcher

Research Associate


External Evaluators – Rutgers University


University of Massachusetts Lowell


Curriculum Developer, Founder of Emergence

Research and Evaluation, Rath Educational Evaluation and Research
Curriculum Consultants

Waters Center for Systems Thinking

STEM Equity Alliance

Mathematics Consultant
Upward Bound Pilot Site Educators
Family Centered Education Agency
2019 – 2021, in-person, virtual, hybrid

CEO and Founder


Administrative Assistant
University of Georgia
2019 – 2021, in-person, virtual, hybrid

Director of Upward Bound

Director of TRIO Programs

iStronG Instructor
University of Kansas
2019 – 2021, in-person, virtual, hybrid


Assistant Director of Upward Bound Math & Science and IStronG Instructor
University of Massachusetts – Boston
2019 – 2021, in-person, virtual

Director of Upward Bound

Weatherford College, Texas
2021, in-person

Director of Upward Bound and iStronG Instructor


The iStronG Project (Inclusive, Strong, and Green) was funded by under the National Science Foundation (NSF) iTest Designing and Testing (DTI) Grant #1759163.