Have you been engaged in studying the newest technologies or solving difficult Math tasks when you were in school? STEM is the community that makes science, technology, engineering and math more attractive for people
What Do You Know about STEM Community?
Back in 2008, a few secondary school teachers took part in Science and Engineering Program where they learned about the latest technologies and also communicated with fellows bringing that knowledge to their students, but now people are eager to do something bigger for STEM community: to connect schools and science.
On annual conference based on SEPT, there are held topics of solving the problems in the real world which let alumni directly engage with STEM community in the country. In ten years since it was founded, hundreds of teachers have been attracted to science: scientists talk directly to students making the science more attractive, writing essays and doing researches in different fields of science.
University Support for STEM
So what is STEM? The idea of getting more graduates in such fields as engineering, and technology is not new and many universities try to solve this problem getting in touch with alumni communities. All of them are focused on science, technology, engineering and Math – that is called STEM. The University of Maryland stated they would spend more than three years to increase the number of STEM community students and it has been funded over $2,5 million from Gates Foundation.
The universities of Illinois and Chicago received $100K grant to support the minority of men in the community and another college received $600K for support of female part in STEM fields. All these programs are different but they have one purpose in common – to attract college students to get a degree in STEM field.
STEM Problems
Even though it is hard to attract young people to choose STEM education, when they fall for it students face problems of transfer: courses and credits may not line up, they need to adjust to format of a new class, there is no feeling of community etc. Most parts of the students have a positive experience about their college communities due to support, inspiring professors and helpful advising.
However, once they got four years college program, it turns out they are struggling to complete at least one course, everything goes faster and is more difficult to understand and less support is provided. The content of what has been learned does not match with the content being learned, so successful transfer depends on the agreement made between two colleges, says Packard.
STEM Goals
The main goal, for now, is not only to attract more male and female students into getting STEM degrees but make it easy and headache-free for them.
Now we need to create the system that has both college and university communities and meet students expectations and provide maximum support. Now it is discussed to create an online portfolio so that STEM students could see all the info about their careers and then decide what field to choose. It also can contain necessary documents and personalized modules for easy transferring.
STEM is not very popular now but it is a very interesting direction, it has received many grants and support from foundations and we believe that this field will be developed in the next couple of years.
