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How to use this Toolkit?
The STEM Partnership Toolkit was created to share tools and strategies around the practice of connecting STEM education to community partnerships that enrich learning experiences for youth.
This toolkit describes how in-school and out-of-school STEM educators and professionals worked with our research team to establish and integrate community STEM education partnerships into their existing STEM programs. The toolkit provides the STEM Career Connections model, practice briefs focusing on specific issues, and links to other resources, including a resource pack, publications, and newsletters. We developed the toolkit to be widely applicable, but the strategies and examples came from a rural context, which was the focus of our research.
The toolkit will be most helpful for communities that have already established some degree of STEM programming. It is ok if you are still at the beginning stages, but having a clear idea of your program goals and structure is a prerequisite. Only then will extending into partnerships be successful.
We invite STEM program providers, educators, school administrators, technology coordinators, career counselors, business outreach staff, and researchers to use this toolkit to provide insights and guidance around deepening the STEM experience for youth with community STEM education partnerships.
What are community STEM education partnerships, and why are they important for supporting youth in STEM?
Community STEM education partnerships (CSEPs) are long-term collaborations between organizations (i.e., schools, out-of-school-time learning providers, higher education, businesses) and program participants (i.e., youth, parents/caregivers, and researchers) to improve STEM learning opportunities in a community through coordination and leveraging expertise and resources. The primary purpose of a CSEP is to convene organizations with diverse perspectives but with common goals of engaging youth in STEM.
During our project, a variety of different partnerships were utilized. We had a grant-funded partner that provided our initial anchor to the community, educational partners such as the school district and STEM program providers, and many community partners from local STEM businesses. A handful of these different partners coalesced to form a STEM community partnership group under the guidance of our research team. With each of these partnerships, we focused on discovering mutual benefits, especially for youth.
Community partnerships increase youth awareness of and connection to the local STEM community, increasing youth engagement with local issues and aiding in workforce development. This is particularly important in rural communities that often lose youth to larger, urban areas with more job opportunities. CSEPs also strengthen relationships between educational institutions and local STEM organizations by expanding the context of engagement from providing services to supporting education. Inviting STEM experts to participate in youth curriculum activities and providing exposure to career pathways as STEM mentors were central to the STEM Career Connections model. Building partnerships gave the project access to a pool of STEM mentors and insights into the community's values, which helped shape youth project work.