Galactic Polymath

Galactic Polymath (GP) was founded by Matt Wilkins, PhD—an evolutionary biologist, science communicator, and middle school teacher for over 4 years. Each of our free units is developed in close collaboration with STEM experts (who hire us to do outreach) and dynamic teams of scientists, classroom teachers, artists, and filmmakers.

Our lessons are highly interdisciplinary, narrative-based, and student driven. We design many opportunities for student voice, choice, and active movement. Lessons are designed to be facilitated by a non-specialist with minimal prep time. For teachers with more experience and confidence in the subject matter, we build in numerous connections to current scientific research and outside resources to enable student-driven independent projects and other extensions.

Our team has been recognized by numerous organizations: to Matt Wilkins (GP Founder) - "Sustainable Teacher Award for School Leadership" from Urban Green Lab - "Impact Goals Award" from the Center for Advancing Research Impact in Society to Madelyn Leembruggen (lesson developer) - 2023 TEDx speaker "Soup, salad, or sandwich? Physics has the answer" - 2023 Jackson Wild Media Lab Fellow - 2021 Harvard Physics Excellence in Teaching Prize to Stephanie Castillo (filmmaker) - 2021 Mass Media Fellow for the American Association for the Advancement of Science - 2020 Emerging Producer for the World Congress of Science and Factual Producers - 2019 Jackson Wild Media Lab Fellow to Stephanie Rapciak (lesson developer & workshop facilitator)

As with our lessons, our team is highly interdisciplinary. Matt has a BA in Spanish linguistics, a PhD in ecology and evolution, and experience teaching middle school through upper level grad seminars. Stephanie Rapciak has a masters in educational psychology and over a decade of science teaching experience in public and private schools. Madelyn is finishing up her PhD in physics at Harvard, while simultaneously giving public talks, organizing the World of Women in STEM blog site, and working with GP to produce several mini-units. Stephanie Castillo has a PhD in science communication and a masters in chemistry, and deep experience in popular science writing and video production (with projects for PBS under her belt). This is a snippet of experience. We also work with many other education consultants and artists to produce the mini-units that we are committed to making free for all!

If you teach one of our lessons, please fill out the feedback form. This is the only way we can keep things free. We help scientists and nonprofits do outreach, but importantly, we need to be able to report success stories. Please tell us what we're doing well and what we can improve on. We can't wait to hear from you! :)