The sector-wide conversations are complete, and we’ve analyzed our pre-survey data (responses are being collected on a rolling basis, even after the RFQ is submitted, so please fill it out today if you haven’t already!).
So many outstanding ideas came out of our sector-wide conversations – thanks to all who attended and participated in those! Here is a sampling of what we’ve learned from our pre-survey data:
Outcomes of STEM Learning Ecosystem that would most benefit Chicago:
- Established progression between existing programs to provide clear definition of learning and practice possibilities/pathways in STEM for all K-college youth
- Improved coordination, collaboration, and leadership to support thoughtful, innovative, and learner-centered STEM learning pathways
- Improved connections between STEM and youth
- Alignment of work of various groups doing STEM work
- Universally recognized definition of what program quality means, and common metrics to measure program quality
- Universally recognized definition of what STEM means
- Universally recognized system for badging, including employer recognition of badges
- A central clearinghouse that lists all STEM opportunities, arranged by age group and time commitment
- A useful central data sharing system
What is your “enlightened self-interest?”
- Having a more interested audience, willing to invest more time and resources into STEM OST learning – depends upon being able to provide clear leads for users to take advantage of STEM learning in the city
- A place/mechanism to share resources with our current and future students – clearinghouse, mailing list
- Shared understanding of how our programs can complement and support other STEM programs and engage youth to increase impact
- Improved partnership and collaboration between K-12, higher education, and industry to develop programs, provide joint professional development, provide college/career connections, and internships
- Improved opportunities to connect teen program participants with internships in STEM business and research institutions
- Shared data that can help members align activities and put students at the center of collaboration strategies
What is the nature of your commitment to the STEM Learning Ecosystem?
- Offering our programs to the ecosystem
- Providing and disseminating information
- Models for and best practices on partnerships between large network of stakeholders, including K-12, informal and formal education, higher education, industry, government
- Connections to the STEM Pathways, which is parallel and seeks to reach STEM OST practitioners – funded by HIVE Chicago
- Best practices in evaluation, a framework to identify common metrics, building staff capacity to integrate evaluation into all aspects of our work
- Experience in urban leadership and STEM engagement for youth, families, and schools
- Demographic information and evaluation for Pre-K – 12 programs
- Access to our large network of partners in Illinois – interested in scaling our programs in Illinois and partners with other organizations to leverage our tools including our Mentor Matching Engine
- Locally relevant content expertise
- Educational pedagogy knowledge and staff with experience bridging formal and informal learning
- Existing OST programming infrastructure, including models and systems
- Experience working with underserved populations
- Experience writing large federal grants
- Faculty to provide in-service professional development
- Time and meeting space
- Planning team support, funding availability, thought leadership
- Participate on committees; provide in kind support; possibility of financial support; pilot and execute programs
- Besides funding, willingly advocate for this work among other funders and service providers and help however I can through my various networks
- We want to be an engaged private sector STEM company throughout the process and offer relevant assets/strengths.
What are your perceived barriers to a STEM ecosystem?
- The amount of time needed to invest in the ecosystem – numerous time commitments of people involved
- TIME for the network to ensure partners participate and the outcomes are not biased by stakeholders whose participation was most frequent and neglect key areas of consideration by others.
- The amount of work needed to invest in the ecosystem – keeping up with communication overhead, knowing what others are offering, when, and where so we don’t reinvent the wheel, sending people with jobs to trainings, and the like
- The willingness, ability, and legal issues for stakeholders to share data across the ecosystem
- Silos – lots of good, but uncoordinated work occurring – awareness must be increased
- Going for more than superficial programs and feel-good stories – we need a sustained, deep dive into the weeds
- Establishing a shared language, set of goals, and vision around STEM ecosystem, and how to implement it
- The commitment of boards and administrators of various organizations participating in this work – they have to be on board too
- A heavy emphasis on specialized workforce development instead of development of well-rounded learners who can enter a range of fields with STEM literacy
- Codifying data collected from program participants across programs and institutions
- Figuring out how to best maximize the assets/expertise of each stakeholder and use it effectively to advance the ecosystem
- Being risk averse. To make a meaningful impact in a short period of time requires more than incremental changes
- The social acceptance that is ok not to be good on math or science
- Overcoming fear that collaborating with lessen the “pie” for individual entities – moving to true collaboration and coordination
Certainly, there is more to come – now we’ll be focused on our writing! Note, there will NOT be Friday meetings from July 24-July 31 to accommodate writing. If you have any questions, please contact Stephanie Levi at SLevi@projectexploration.org.
