(Updated February 23)

Emperor Science Award Program Seeks Entries Through March 17

PBS Learning Media and Stand Up To Cancer are encouraging high school students to explore careers in science, including cancer research, through the second annual Emperor Science Award Program. Entries are open through March 17, 2017, for 10^th and 11^th grade U.S.-based students. The program will award 100 students a mentoring opportunity to work with a university-level research scientist on a multi-week cancer research project. To apply, students must submit an application and a 750-word essay.

American Historical Association recognizes librarian and historian for creating TeachArchives.Org

Robin Katz, left, and Julie Golia

University of California, Riverside Outreach & Public Services librarian Robin Katz and Julie Golia, director of public history with the Brooklyn Historical Society, have received the James Harvey Robinson Prize from the American Historical Association. The James Harvey Robinson Prize is awarded to the creators of a teaching aid that has made the most outstanding contribution to the teaching and learning of history for public or educational purposes. Katz and Golia were recognized for their work on TeachArchives.org, making information available online for free to a global audience. The pair was awarded a three-year grant from the U.S. Department of Education through the Fund for the Improvement of Post-Secondary Education.

Virginia librarian named 2017 Sister Sally Daly Memorial Grant recipient

The Catholic Library Association (CLA), together with Junior Library Guild—a Media Source Inc. company—established a grant in 2007 in memory of Sally Daly, SSJ, an ardent supporter of recruiting new members to CLA and its Children’s Library Services Section.

Sister Sally Daly

Angie Bush, a librarian at St. Anne Catholic School in Bristol, VA, is this year’s recipient of the $1,500 grant, intended to enable her to attend CLA’s annual convention in St. Louis, MO. Bush is a member of the Virginia Association of School Librarians, the Southwest Virginia State Reading Association, and serves on Virginia’s Reader’s Choice committee. She earned her Library Media Certification from the University of Virginia College at Wise in 2011. “While we’ve always been supportive of the Catholic school community, we’ve recently introduced a number of products and services that make it even easier for Catholic educators to get high quality, new-release books that meet their standards for content for their libraries,” says Andrew Thorne, vice president, marketing, for Junior Library Guild.

Sesame Workshop named semi-finalist for the MacArthur Foundation 100&Change grant

Contenders for the MacArthur Foundation's new $100 million grant for a single proposal that solves a major global problem have been narrowed down to eight, from nearly 2,000 applicants. One of those semi-finalists is Sesame Workshop. Together with the International Rescue Committee, they submitted educational multimedia content designed to meet the critical development needs of and mitigate the effects of adverse childhood experiences in crisis settings for the world's 12 million refugee children.

National Society of Black Engineers launches campaign

Leveraging the popularity of the hit movie Hidden Figures, about three African American women who contributed crucial STEM work to early U.S. space missions, the National Society of Black Engineers (NSBE) has launched a nationwide campaign, #BlackSTEMLikeMe. The multimedia initiative is aiming to encourage black students and professionals in STEM to share their stories and passions; bring visibility to the important work they’re doing; and show black boys and girls that a future in STEM is an attainable career path. They can do that by sharing STEM stories on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat or via BlackSTEMLikeMe.nsbe.org  using the #BlackSTEMLikeMe hashtag. The best stories will be entered in NSBE’s national social media webisode series.

Texas Teen Curates Digital Reading List on OverDrive

San Antonio Public Library teen volunteer and Fox Tech High School senior, Cecelia Gonzalez, has parlayed her love of reading into the first teen-curated digital reading list on OverDrive. "Teen Favorites: Cece's Picks" is available on the library’s website. The ebooks and eAudiobooks can be checked out and downloaded directly. The items also return themselves when lending periods are over, so borrowers never receive late fees for digital items. Included among Cece’s picks are Death Cloud by Andrew Lane; Me Before You by Jojo Meyers; Milk and Honey by Rupi Kaur; The Immortal Instruments by Cassandra Clare; Macbeth by William Shakespeare; and “Harry Potter” titles by J.K. Rowling Gonzalez, who has been a library volunteer for two years, was recently accepted into Texas Tech University.

The Snowy Day stamp to be issued

In late 2017, Ezra Jack Keats's most beloved story, The Snowy Day, will be showcased on a U.S. postage stamp. It was one of the first prominent 20th-century picture books centered on an African-American child. Each of the four new stamps in this 20-stamp booklet features a different illustration of Peter, the main character. Art director Antonio Alcalá designed the stamps with Keats’s original art.

YouTube Channel aims to inspire youth to jump into STEM 

Millennials Xyla Foxlin and Andrew Dupuis are producing “Beauty and the Bolt” with the hope of making STEM-centric projects understandable and accessible to teens, especially young women. Their goal is to share what is happening in the engineering and the maker movement in an engaging manner and make it available to the pockets of the "population that aren’t currently being reached.” Videos are separated into categories, such as the "Zero to Hero" series, which is geared to beginners. Many tutorials have a matching project video.