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.