With a $25,000 grant to spend, teacher Renee Powell logged in to Amazon and started placing 3D printers, robots, virtual reality goggles, digital microscopes, drones and sewing machines in her virtual shopping cart. She kept shopping to create the Extreme Classroom Makeover envisioned in the school’s winning video for the program funded by Oak Ridge Associated Universities.

Renee Powell, STEM teacher at Lanier Elementary School in Maryville, was named the winner of Oak Ridge Associated Universities' 11th annual Extreme Classroom Makeover. Powell purchased $25,000 worth of new technology for her classroom, including earth models and digital microscopes for biology.

Lanier Elementary School teacher Renee Powell unveiled the classroom of her dreams on Monday after winning ORAU's $25,000 Extreme Classroom Makeover. 

ORAU hosted a competition with robots that were designed, built and programmed from scratch by middle school students from across East Tennessee. The robots were pitted against each other in special tasks. The competition was the culmination of the annual Oak Ridge Robotics Academy, sponsored by ORAU.

In East Tennessee -- and across the country -- finding the right candidates and enough candidates to take over advanced positions in the science, technology, engineering and mathematics, or STEM, fields has become a constant battle. STEM occupations are at an all-time high, while U.s. universities are struggling to keep up with demand. In this story, experts from ORAU and the Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education discuss the roadmap to building a strong STEM workforce.

Dr. Al Hazari, retired chemistry professor from the University of Tennessee, led a group of 1st through 5th grade teachers through a series of activities they can do with their students to help solve crimes, including chromatography and handwriting analysis techniques.

Middle school students learned forensic techniques during a two-day Forensic Chemistry Mini-Academy held at ORAU on June 19 and 20.

School's out for Summer, but students in Clinton are still busy learning. Thanks to a partnership with ORAU, Clinton City Schools is hosting its first Summer STEM Camp, free of cost to students.

Students at Clinton Elementary School saw a problem with a community pond, so they decided to come up with a solution. They solved the problem with plants that would compete with algae for nitrogen in the water. The project was possible thanks to a grant from ORAU.

Jennifer Tyrell, ORAU K-12 section manager, talks with anchor Mark Packer about free professional development programs for educators and educational programs for students available at ORAU this summer. Learn more at www.oraustem.com.

Learn more abou tthe Summer Camps & Programs at ORAU. ORAU offers exciting programs and activities for K-12 students and educators. Learn more go to https://oraustem.com/.

About one fourth of the Northern Hemisphere is covered in permafrost. Now, these permanently frozen beds of soil, rock, and sediment are actually not so permanent: They're thawing at an increasing rate.

When my husband, Allan Reiss, our friends Richard and Laura Wolfe, and I planned a year ago to take a cruise around Norway, we imagined an idyllic escape from the world to explore the beautiful fjords and landscapes of a place we had never been. While most of the trip was a dream come true, it was fun until it wasn't.

The Thurgood Marshall College Fund (TMCF) has recently partnered with Oak Ridge Associated Universities (ORAU) to further student and faculty opportunities in STEM research at historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs). This partnership, which officially began with the signing of a memorandum of understanding on March 29, will strive to provide resources to those schools to encourage faculty and student STEM research.

The nation's historically black colleges and universities and minority-serving educational institutions are often untapped resources abounding in talent, ingenuity and expertise, but lacking in the material resources necessary for scientific research, a press release said. Tapping into those resources is a big part of the reason ORAU and the Thurgood Marshall College Fund officially began a working relationship with the signing of a memorandum of understanding in Oak Ridge on Friday, March 29, the press release said.

When Jamey Kennedy, 64, of Clinton, booked a Norwegian cruise on the Viking Sky, she never imagined it would end with her dangling from a helicopter over towering, violent ocean waves. Kennedy, a strategic planning advisor at Oak Ridge Associated Universities, was at the tail end of an enjoyable vacation with her husband, Allan Reiss, 75, and their neighbors, Laura and Richard Wolfe.

It's time for a technology make-over for one Blount County elementary school. ORAU awarded $25,000 to Renee Powell, a STEM teacher at Lanier Elementary School. Powell won the top prize in ORAU's annual Extreme Classroom Makeover.

Renee Powell tells her students at Lanier Elementary School that they can do anything if they work for it, and proof of that concept arrived Monday afternoon as a giant check for $25,000.

A Blount County elementary school teacher found out she will get an Extreme Classroom Makeover Monday afternoon. Renee Powell from Lanier Elementary School received $25,000 to make over her classroom with the latest technology. The grant is from Oak Ridge Associated Universities.

Our first WATE 6 On Your Side Project Grad Laptop Telethon kicked off last March, bright and early in the morning. Eric Abelquist, executive vice president at Oak Ridge Associated Universities, presented a check to help the cause and inspire others to give. This year, ORAU is back, doubling its support. They came by the station to meet student Demyia Smith.

IN 1956, the Clinton 12 attended Clinton High School, becoming the first black students to attend the previously all-white school. This was after the U.S. Supreme Court's 1954 ruling in Brown v. Board of Education. Two students who attended Clinton High School at the time -- retired longtime Clinton attorney Jerry Shattuck, a former Clinton High School class president and football team captain, and Clinton 12 member Gail Ann Epps Upton, the first black female student to graduate from Clinton High School -- addressed a crowd gathered Wednesday in the Oak Ridge Associated Universities' Pollard Auditorium for a unique ORAU Black History Month event.

Oak Ridge Associated Universities celebrated Black History Month earlier Wednesday by remebering and honoring the Clinton 12. The Clinton 12 consists of 12 young people in Clinton, Tenn., who were the first students to integrate a state-supported high school in the South by court order in 1956.

Hoe long will those new toys keep your child entertained? If you're looking for some fun around the house, ORAU joined Living East Tennessee with some science experiments you can do with items at home.

ORAU signed a memorandum of understanding to work with the Children's Museum of Oak Ridge to expand STEM education programming in the community. The signing event was held during National Computer Science Week, and ORAU's K-12 staff held a coding and robotics class for students in CMOR's after school program.