Hope and Empowerment: Xplorlabs Educator Fellows Join the ULRI Research Symposium

UL Research Institutes and the Office of Research Experiences & Education (OREE) invited 33 Xplorlabs Educator Fellows to attend the 2024 ULRI Research Symposium in Atlanta, Georgia. For the fellows, it was an opportunity to enrich their understanding of relevant safety science research and reflect on building bridges from this work to their K-12 classrooms and other community learning spaces. The group includes math teachers, an astronaut-turned-museum curator, and public safety professionals now in classrooms across the country.

As subject matter experts and researchers presented findings, ideas, and solutions during the panels and presentations, educator fellows could be spotted asking questions to clarify and broaden their own understanding. Feelings of excitement, wonder, and inspiration were palpable.

From reflections and conversations with fellows, another emerging theme centered around community engagement and meeting safety needs in each of their home cities and regions. Some envisioned safety villages, like the Cobb County Safety Village in metro Atlanta, in their own towns and began brainstorming about ways to build relationships with public health and safety professionals.

The fellows’ desire to brainstorm ideas immediately following many of the presentations at the Research Symposium was often hard to contain.  Many times you’d find fellows huddled together around a table, collaborating on opportunities to put scientific theory into action-oriented classroom practices. Always explicit in these conversations was the motivation to pass on the feelings of hope and solution-seeking to their students.

As a former Xplorlabs Educator Fellow and second-year attendee of the Research Symposium myself, I saw our fellows go through a similar transformation to what I experienced my first year, leaving these presentations and panel discussions with deepened understandings to engage students in complex safety science concepts. As educator fellows, we return to our communities full of hope and wonder of what could be for our students and the future of humanity. We feel empowered and educated to tackle bigger and “harder” subjects in our classrooms.

It is this confidence that allows us to engage with our students in new conversations that lead students to truly change their behavior and live safer lives. The students of former fellows are taking the safety conversation home with them and exponentially spreading the reach of the message that starts from ULRI research, whether gathered through Xplorlabs resources and investigations or directly hearing from talented scientists and researchers at the ULRI Research Symposium.