Established by the School of Engineering Education (ENE) in 2006, INSPIRE focuses on increasing the presence of engineering in the formal PreK-12 curriculum, ultimately preparing a greater number of diverse students for study in engineering.

Strobel is part of Purdue's cross-colleges p-12 sTEm initiative; contributes to INSPIRE’s research agenda, which focuses on student learning, assessment, and teacher professional development; and is co-principal investigator on several NSF and other external research awards for the institute.