Solarpunk, Rural Education, and the STEMACES Program

Hannah Hellman, M.A. and Laura Peticolas, Ph.D.

Friday, November 21 from 2-3pm ET (Register)

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Solar Punk is a genre and speculative art movement that builds on themes commonly seen in the Cyberpunk or Steampunk genres. Solarpunk can feature themes like sustainable change, pride in one’s work, environmental resilience, and hope, just to name a few. To quote RoAnna Sylva: “[Solarpunk] is a movement of counter-cultural hope to face the processes of accumulation, inequity, environmental degradation, control of corporations and the state over our life. Hope, then, can nourish the spaces of autonomy.” The U.S. is a very big place. While it may seem like urban centers stretch and, ultimately, fill the entirety of our country, there is actually more “rural” land than there is urban or suburban. No rural area or community is the same, so no single approach to education or learning will do. Moreover, the approaches used to support urban and suburban communities are not as likely to support the needs of the rural community. Rural education, with all of this in mind and for our purposes, is education aimed at students learning within rural communities. Much of Solarpunk’s advances happen in the energy and agriculture sectors, and these advances bring technological growth and industry to parts of the country that are most likely to suffer from destructive practices. Rural parts of America have often been centers of sourcing materials needed for technological advances, such as plutonium mines in Utah, or coal mines in West Virginia.

 

STEMACES aims to increase student’s science learning outcomes by ensuring the use of hands-on STEM+C activities within a science classroom, providing teachers the training needed to incorporate these activities into the classroom while meeting local and state STEM+C standards, and providing additional teacher-requested support throughout the year. This is an important goal, which has the potential to build capacity in rural communities to continue to build their own technological solutions, while engaging in those that provide electricity and resources to urban and suburban areas.​​​​​