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Erin de Leon Sanchez, Emily and Traci’s graduate student project advisor, in the urchin lab at UC SB.

As part of a multi-site Research Experience for Teachers (RET) program, two science teachers, Emily Chittick and Traci Kennedy, from Milwaukee Public Schools, conducted an experiment to see whether warmer water temperatures affected the ability of sea urchins to flip themselves over after being turned upside down. They wrote up this part of their summer research experience and their resulting data in a new LTER DataNugget. This is the first of five DataNuggets that the cohort of teachers plans to produce. Keep an eye on the LTER DataNugget Collection for new LTER DataNuggets as they come out.


Data Nuggets are free classroom activities, co-designed by scientists and teachers, designed to bring contemporary research and authentic data into the classroom. Data Nuggets feature a scientist role model and the story of what inspired their research. In a Data Nugget activity, students are guided through the entire process of science, including identifying hypotheses and predictions, visualizing and interpreting data, supporting claims using data as evidence, and asking their own questions for future research.

Now an independent 501(3)c, DataNuggets were conceived as part of the education and engagement activities of the Kellogg Biological Station LTER.