Over the years, the partnership has taken many forms. Daniel Kelley, director of the Battelle Center, presented at Metro’s Career Day in Spring 2025, sharing his career path and experiences with students. Battelle Center staff also joined Ohio State President Ted Carter at the ribbon cutting for Metro’s new middle and high school campus at Indianola. This marked an important moment in the school’s growth.
The Battelle Center has served as a point of connection between Metro teachers and subject matter experts to support their coursework and student understanding. Guest speakers were linked to courses on IT challenges, discrete math and cybersecurity, infectious disease modeling and plastic production. Professionals included Ryan Zinn, Staff Sergeant Nick White, Professor J. Tien and Jason Walker. To further support these connections, the Battelle Center helped create a directed form for Metro teachers to request university resources and expertise, making it easier to connect Metro classrooms to Ohio State knowledge. Battelle Center staff have also served on the panel of judges assessing Metro students’ Pathways capstone presentations. Through these efforts, students have participated in learning opportunities that bring them into direct collaboration with university students and professionals that tackle real-world challenges.
The Senior Innovations course at Metro emphasizes problem-solving and human-centered design. Battelle Center staff have guided students in thinking critically, understanding obstacles and developing creative solutions. This spring, Ethan Rivera, Senior Student Program Specialist at the Battelle Center, will continue working with Neugebauer to support the class. The Battelle Center also helped create a directed form for Metro teachers to request university resources and expertise, making it easier to connect Metro classrooms to Ohio State knowledge. At Metro’s request, Lisa Frazier, Assistant Director at the Battelle Center, taught an additional section of PUBAFRS 2620: Science, Engineering and Technology Policy for the Public's Interest open to Metro’s Design Pathway students. In this project-based class, Metro students worked on multidisciplinary teams, gaining early exposure to college-level expectations, professional collaboration and applied problem solving while tackling challenges at the intersection of science, technology and public policy.
Building on these efforts, the INSPIRES (INspiring Students to Pursue Innovation and Inquiry Relevant to Earth and Space) project represents the next step in Metro and the Battelle’s Center partnership. A $300,000 gift from Battelle supports the Battelle Center and Metro in developing high-impact curricular elements for K-12 and undergraduate students. INSPIRES uses educational materials from the ISS National Laboratory library to create replicable low earth orbit lessons and modules. The goal is to help students think critically, solve complex problems and explore awe-inspiring concepts like human activity in space. Metro will pilot the curriculum during the 2026-27 school year. The Battelle Center plans to review the programming and recommend strategies for scaling it across Ohio, potentially reaching thousands of students.
