STEM Education and Training

Hello! My name is Julia Li, and I am a senior researcher at Rockman et al Cooperative, an education research and evaluation firm that specializes in STEM education. In recent years, I’ve seen a growing interest in STEM programs incorporating art-based lessons as a means to inspire more STEM engagement, learning, and identity in youth and adult audiences. The inclusion of art in STEM programs can create new evaluation challenges as art is an expansive genre and subjective to interpretation.

Hello all- we are Laura Weiss and Deborah Wasserman, researchers with COSI’s Center for Research and Evaluation and want to share with you an exciting tool for facilitating co-created informal STEM educational program planning and evaluation.

Informal STEM learning institutions, educators, and evaluators face a unique challenge. Each institution sponsors a wide array of programming for all sorts of learners. Educational interactions can range from two- or three-minute interactions to multi-year intensive programming. Across a broad spectrum of programming contact time, and learners, how do we plan and evaluate these programs in a way that is useful to the program providers while contributing to a single understanding of institutional impact?

Hi! I’m Manuel Pérez-Troncoso, a postdoctoral researcher and evaluator at the NSF INCLUDES SEAS Islands Alliance. I’ve been fortunate to be part of this transformative project as a researcher and now an evaluator.

For the past five years, the NSF INCLUDES SEAS Islands Alliance, a collaborative endeavor of universities and research institutions initiated by the National Science Foundation, has been at the forefront of supporting strategies and interventions to broaden the participation of young islander scientists in the US Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, and Guam. This initiative, known as ‘SEAS,’ spans all levels of education, from middle school to the workforce, with the overarching goal of increasing the participation in STEM of young islanders’ scientists, particularly those from underrepresented minorities.

I am Melissa K. Demetrikopoulos, Chair of STEM Education and Training TIG and Director of Scientific Communications at the Institute for Biomedical Philosophy here with Terry Mills of Morehouse College and BlueSKY Collaborative Partners. We are presenting information about an Exploratory Sequential Mixed Methods approach being utilized with our partners at Morehouse College including J.K. Haynes, Cynthia Trawick, Jigsa Tola, and Triscia Hendrickson.

Hello. I am John Pecore, a professor in the School of Education at the University of West Florida, an Askew Institute for Multidisciplinary Studies Research Fellow, and the president-elect for the Association for Science Teacher Education.

Hi everyone! My name is Sara Bolduc. I am the President of my own external evaluation consultancy (Sara Bolduc Planning and Evaluation LLC) located on the Island of Oahu, in Hawaii. We evaluate STEM and Health programs in the Pacific Region (including remote Pacific Islands) as well as in the continental United States. Much of our program evaluation work involves working with large research, education and workforce development initiatives (NSF, NIH, CDC) with diverse, fluctuating teams working collaboratively towards broad societal goals. We have found that large science teams often experience similar challenges and have attempted to design tools to promote team progress and effectiveness.

Greetings. We are Wesley D. Thompson, Project Manager and Director of Exhibits at Haremco and Andreas C. Thompson, Graduate Student in the Department of Mathematics at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. We have collaborated on the development and assessment of informal STEM learning opportunities for gifted students. 

We are Jim Van Haneghan (Professor and Chair, Dept. of  Counseling and Instructional Sciences, University of South Alabama) and David Reider (Principal Partner with eDUCATIONDESIGN).  Over the past several years we have been part of a project that has examined a STEM summer camp that combines STEM and workforce development considerations in a population that …

STEM Education & Training TIG Week: Issues in Scaling out a STEM Summer Camp for Students in JROTC by Jim Van Haneghan and David Reider Read More »

Hello, we are Drs. Angelicque Tucker Blackmon and David Sul, independent evaluation consultants and members of the AEA STEM TIG. Historically, BIPOC candidates have been excluded at some point along their journey within the STEM ecosystem (Figure 1), which often results in STEM evaluators “othering” excluded BIPOC STEM program participants and categorizing them as different …

STEM Education & Training TIG Week: Building Trust within Liberatory STEM Ecosystems by Angelicque Tucker Blackmon and David Sul Read More »

Hi there! My name is Linnea and I am a PhD Candidate in the School of Human Ecology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. As a member of the STEM TIG, I’m excited to share with you all a bit about a project I helped direct and our evaluation approach. The Short-Term Research Experience Program to …

STEM Education & Training TIG Week: Evaluating a 6-week Virtual Pilot for American Indian 9th and 10th Graders by Linnea Hjelm Read More »