A large room painted green filled with tables and red chairs. Birch leaf artwork hangs on the wall

STEAM Studio

The STEAM (STEM + ART) studio, classroom and kitchen houses OneTree 草榴社区, an interdisciplinary program focusing on boreal forest education, plant phenology, climate change, birch sap tapping, and using art to interpret and illustrate science. 

OneTree 草榴社区 collaborates with K-12 teachers, the Fairbanks North Star Borough School District, university students, staff and faculty, Fairbanks artists, and many community partners.

Contact

Jan Dawe
Assistant Professor

Location: 1850 Tanana Lp E, Fairbanks, AK 99709

Facilities

The STEAM studio is part production kitchen, part classroom and makerspace, and part STEAM exhibition space. It is designed to be a collaborative area and hosts all sorts of projects. The studio is homebase for community sap-to-syrup boil-down production, teacher professional development courses on inquiry-based and place-based learning, long-term ecological monitoring of birch tree phenology, curriculum development, and using science as inspiration for art and storytelling. 
 

 

Image of &/afes/places/steam-lab/34;climate stripes&/afes/places/steam-lab/34;, stripes of color depicting temperature differences away from the 32 degrees F for spring from 2011 to 2022. These stripes show an artisitic representation of spring warming

A tall shelf filled with jars and bottles of birch syrup. A painting of a yellow birch leaf perches on top of the shelf

A black shelf filled with different pieces of birch trees stored in clear bins including small cookies, small branches, and sawdust

Colorful woven strips hang on birch branches. These art pieces were inspired by climate data, with each color yarn representing the number of degrees different from 32 degrees F

Charcoal sticks for drawing made out of birch branches pile on top of tin foil