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"Dr. Williamson has been a blessing to the BBSE!"
~ Dr. Chet Nicklas, Director of the UWA Black Belt STEM Education Institute
Spring 2024: I led a 5-part virtual climate change teacher professional development series. Topics include: (1) How do we know? (2) climate change physical science, (3) climate change social science, (4) climate change solutions, and (5) K-12 Climate Action and Youth Voice with material is inspired by the West Virginia Climate Change Professional Development project.
Summer-Fall 2024: I developed and tested a middle-school presentation called, "Climate Change: How Do We Know?" and tested it at Tech Trek.
Spring 2025: I co-led a teacher PD course on preparing youth to engage as citizen environmental scientists, and I was a lead planning member on the team to develop and host the first Alabama Youth Action for Sustainability Summit May 9-10th, 2025, in Gulf Shores, AL.
Spring 2026: I co-led teacher PD on "Funding Student Environmental Science Projects," and I'm the lead planning member on the team to host the second Alabama Youth Action for Sustainability Summit May 16th-17th, 2026, at Camp McDowell.
"Kathryn has worked with Energy Alabama has provided invaluable insight and connections to our clean energy education programming throughout the state. Her experience engaging teachers and students in climate education in West Virginia proved extraordinarily helpful in reaching and messaging a charged topic in with important audiences. Dr. Williamson has displayed a high level of professionalism, an unmatched work ethic, and unwavering perseverance. She takes on projects, no matter the difficulty, prioritizing community impact and how Energy Alabama’s work can deliver benefits to those most in need. Put simply, we cannot possibly say enough positive things about Dr. Williamson."
~ Daniel Tait, Executive Director for Energy Alabama
Energy Alabama is a non-profit organization that advocates for clean energy in Alabama. I contract with Energy Alabama to develop teacher professional development opportunities focusing on the Energy Alabama energy efficiency curriculum. These have included: "Solar Careers Networking Events," with collaborators from Runergy USA, Enpower, and Little USA Solar, "Biomimicry: It's In Our Nature!" with collaborators from the Biomimicry Institute and Planet Sapling, and "Beyond Solar: All About Alternative Energies," with collaborator from the Southeastern Wind Coalition and the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy. I also presented "Spaceship Earth" with Energy Alabama's Apollo 13 energy conservation activity at the Alabama Youth Action for Sustainability Summit. Throughout Spring 2026, I helped develop and lead Energy Alabama's new suite of curriculum called "Energy in Action."
I am currently contracting with the NASA West Virginia Space Grant Consortium to write an outreach module featuring the Mars Aurora Research led by WVU Professor, Dr. Chris Fowler. Student ambassadors in the West Virginia Science Public Outreach Team will learn and present the module at K-12 schools throughout the 2026-2027 academic year.
For the January 2026 - June 2027 time period, I am serving as a Co-Investigator on the "Alabama Climate Physics Ambassadors" APS Innovation Award to UAB PI, Dr. Michelle Wooten. I will help develop a Climate Physics outreach module and train student ambassadors to deliver it to school around the state.
In Fall 2025, I contracted with the Green Bank Observatory West Virginia Science Public Outreach Team to advance an outreach module called "The Power of Luminescence" to feature the biomedical research of WVU professor, Dr. Margaret Bennewitz.
As of Summer 2025, I am a STEM Mentor for the STEMMing the Tide project led by Dr. Kate Hayden at the University of Montevallo. In March 2025, I wrote the blog post: "Alabama Educators Teach Climate Change" to highlight the STEMMing the Tide collaboration with the UWA Black Belt STEM Education Institute to support teacher professional development toward youth environmental citizen science projects. I served as a research partner the Summer 2025 teacher workshops in Shelby County and Mobile County.
As a long-term beneficiary of Space Grant, both as a graduate student in Montana and as a professor in West Virginia, I am honored to be able to continue working with Space Grant in Alabama.
During 2023-2024, I developed and implemented a pilot "K-12 Action Plan" modeled after the "Space Public Outreach Team" in Montana or "Science Public Outreach Team" in West Virginia. Choosing Eclipses as the focus for the year, I helped ASGC develop their eclipse outreach plan to distribute over 50,000 safe-viewing glasses across the state to schools that have lower than 50% science achievement rates and greater than 50% of students who are socioeconomically disadvantaged. I created a standards-aligned eclipse outreach module for ASGC students to deliver at schools and for teachers to use in their classrooms. I created the Alabama K-12 Eclipse Resources 2023-2024 website and led 2 eclipse teacher professional development trainings for the Alabama Math, Science, and Technology Insitiative (AMSTI), reaching over 200 AL educators.
In Fall 2024, I developed an outreach module called "Coding a Mars" rover that uses Scratch and ELEGOO Robots to teach the basics of coding, such as if/then statements.
From 2025-2026, I assisted Dr. Sukana Chakrabarti in the UAH Department of Physics with a NASA CANS grant to create an outreach module focused on her research on high-precision, high-time cadence astronomical measurements of objects in the Milky Way to determine the distribution of dark matter. The resulting presentation is called "Decoding Dark Matter: Mapping the Milky Way," and it is currently being presented at K-12 schools by Alabama Space Grant Consortium student ambassadors.
As of Spring 2024, I am honored to serve as an elected member of the Board of the Environmental Education Association of Alabama. As of 2026, I serve as Treasurer.
At the February 2024 EEAA meeting, I also gave a presentation called "Teaching Climate Change in Coal Country," inspired by my time co-leading and developing the West Virginia Climate Change Professional Development Project.
I have been a collaborator on 3 NSF grants to WVU researchers to develop science communication resources develop outreach modules featuring their work to be integrated with the West Virginia Science Public Outreach Team (WV SPOT) ambassador training and K-12 school visits.
Dr. Piyush Mehta's NSF CAREER award: I developed a science communication component for Dr. Mehta's graduate students, trained students on outreach strategies, and mentored students through testing the activity with Girl Scouts. I also re-designed a a Space Weather and atmospheric drag educational outreach presentation and activity and created a "Satellite Solutions for West Virginia" outreach module.
Dr. Loren Anderson's NSF Astronomy and Astrophysics award: I created a "Searching for Stellar Explosions" presentation focused on supernova remnants and using the Green Bank 20-meter radio telescope via the Skynet Robotic Telescope Network. I pilot tested this presentation at the Munford Schools Teen Science Cafe in Fall 2024.
Dr. Duncan Lorimer's NSF Astronomy and Astrophysics award for the GREENBURST Collaboration: I am created a "Cosmic Detective" interactive mystery module to showcase the search to characterize Fast Radio Bursts.
"Kathryn has been a delight to work with on my Broader Impact NSF projects. She is organized and thoughtful about how best to engage the community and, importantly, has expertise in both science education and in the scientific content itself. This rare combination means that her work on a project requires minimal input from me, which is invaluable when juggling many different grant requirements."
~ Dr. Loren Anderson, Astronomy Professor at West Virginia University.
As of Summer 2025, I have become a member of Starry Skies South, a chapter of DarkSky International. Did you know that dark skies are necessary for human and ecological health? Misidrected lights at night can drown out starlight. Over 80% of the world's population currently lives under light polluted skies. I am working to bring GLOBE at Night citizen science engagement to K-12 audiences around Alabama.
A4E is a grassroots group of astronomers from around the world who are working to address the climate crisis from an astronomical perspective. With support from an NSF award to San Francisco State University and several A4E volunteers, I co-lead the Web Resources Working Group. Over the 2023-2024 year, we collated 148 resources to the A4E Documents and Materials page, and organized these into categories and themes (tags). We helped A4E members based at San Francisco State University conduct an A4E member survey to understand how A4E members around the world use the posted resources. And, we worked with Steve Agnos Films to generate an eclipse-themed "Alignment of Planet Earth" video series and collaborated with A4E members around the world to generate Spanish, French, and Japanese translations.
I designed and led 3 teacher professional development workshops for Alabama A+ College Ready.
2023: "Critical Conversations on Climate Science."
2024: "Gravity: Let It Pull You In!"
2025: "Light & Sensing: Decoding the Invisible Universe." One teacher commended, "This was the best presentation yet that I’ve been to at any A+ training."
During the 2023-2024 and 2024-2025 academic years, I served as an Earth and Space Science content mentor for the NSF Noyce Teaching Fellowship Track 2 Project, Developing Leaders in Science Teaching (LIST) award to the University of Alabama led by PI Dennis Sunal.
In summer 2024, I taught the Astronomy of the Solar System online course (AST 104 + AST 1103 Lab) for the University of Alabama at Birmingham Department of Physics. I worked with Dr. Michelle Wooten to modify and build on an existing module on "Earth Habitability and Climate Change."
I hosted a "Physics and Climate Change" workshop at the American Physical Society Conference for Undergraduate Women in Physics (CUWiP) at West Virginia University on January 20, 2024. Material is inspired by Astronomers for Planet Earth.
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