The Battelle Engineering, Technology and Human Affairs (BETHA) Endowment annual grant competition supports projects that examine the complex relationship between science and technology on society and cultural issues. Four projects were selected for the 2024 award cycle.
Projects selected to receive 2024 grants
From Classroom to Catalysts: Fostering Youth Advocacy and Activism Through Interdisciplinary Science and Community Research
Sophia Jeong
College of Education and Human Ecology
The project addresses the disconnection between STEM education and civic engagement, particularly for underrepresented student populations. It integrates a case-based curriculum with the CREATES-HS program, allowing students to select and tackle community-specific health disparities and environmental issues. This student-led approach enhances engagement and fosters "solutionaries" who apply scientific knowledge to real-world problems. Expected outcomes include improved STEM proficiency, heightened civic engagement, and the development of informed, compassionate STEM professionals.
Creating Pathways from the Classroom to Commercialization
Kristina Kennedy
College of Engineering
Ohio State’s Integrated Business & Engineering program has partnered with the Accessible Prosthetics Initiative (national non-profit) to provide undergraduate students a pilot “classroom to commercialization” summer opportunity to further build their professional skills via deep-diving into product development and continuing to refine prototypes developed in the classroom. The goal of this program is to not only to give students a meaningful real-world experience by keeping student projects alive via further maturation, but to also find appropriate pathways to commercialize and provide much needed support to end-users in the limb-different community.
Collaboration of Glass Area and Engineering: Expanding Glass Arts with Cutting-Edge 3D Printing
David King
College of Arts and Sciences
3D printing is a transformative technology in both engineering and the visual arts. This project is a collaboration between the Department of Art's Glass area and the College of Engineering’s Center for Design and Manufacturing Excellence (CDME) on the integration of art and engineering using glass additive manufacturing. Undergraduate students from both areas will work together to design unique works of art using cutting-edge 3D printing technology. The goal is critically probing the meaning and value of technological innovations through an interdisciplinary approach to research and development, revealing and reflecting upon the oftendiffering goals for artists and engineers.
Leveraging Technology to Accelerate Generation and Translation of Evidence- Based Practices in Education
Shayne B. Piasta
College of Education and Human Ecology
This pilot project will leverage advancements in technology to develop an innovative approach to accelerate testing and translation of generalizable, evidence-based practices (EBPs) in education. It will: develop infrastructure/processes to support use of a new, technology-mediated approach; address a problem of practice and test a generalizable EBP solution via a within-subjects experiment; and couple this work with online communities of practice to understand and integrate teachers’ perspectives on enhancing translation between research and practice.