Designing Elementary STEM Challenges

Title: Designing Elementary STEM Challenges
Target Audience: k-8
Presenter: Carla Billups

This session will focus on designing STEM challenges using easily accessible materials based on
North Carolina standards in Science, ELA, and Social Studies. We also work on integrating
STEM careers and text to all challenges. We will focus on setting problems and challenges using
the Engineering Design Process. Templates will be provided as well as resources for how to
design a strong STEM challenge.
Bio: Carla Billups has been the Elementary STEM Coach for Buncombe County Schools for the
past seven years where she has implemented and designed curriculum for 24 elementary STEM
labs. Prior to this work, she was an elementary Math and Science teacher for 6 years of her 26
years as an elementary school teacher. Carla has also been an adjunct instructor for Western
Carolina University where she taught Elementary Science Methods. She was an instructor for the

ExxonMobil Teachers Academy for 14 years and for AIMS Education Foundation for 23 years.
She has served on NSTA’s Best STEM Book and NSTA’s Outstanding Science Trade Book
committees.  Currently, she is the president of the North Carolina Science Leadership
Association.  The book she co-authored, the Fungus Among Us, the Good, the Bad, and the
Downright Scary made NSTA’s Outstanding Science Tradebook list in 2017. She has received
the North Carolina SMT’s Outstanding Instructional Leader Award, NCSLA’s Michael C.
Jackson Distinguished Service Award, and NCSTA’s Jo Duckett Wallace Elementary
Distinguished Service Award.