University earth science departments seeking to establish meaningful geoscience outreach programs often pursue large-scale, grant-funded programs. Although this type of outreach is highly successful, it is also extremely costly, and grant funding can be difficult to secure. Here, we present the Geoscience Education Outreach Program (GEOP), a…

The Institute for Scientist & Engineer Educators (ISEE) is a national effort to improve STEM education and workforce development by transforming how the next generation of scientists and engineers teach and mentor. Housed at the University of California, Santa Cruz, ISEE is the legacy of the educational side of the Center for Adaptive Optics…

Built as one of 60+ hubs on the HUBzero platform, STEMEdhub was developed in 2011 as a resource for research, education, and collaboration in STEM education. The hub currently supports 82 different groups. In this article, the authors describe two specific groups (SLED and AAU) that are taking advantage of numerous communication and resource tools…

Lab components of undergraduate science courses typically have students complete highly directed cookbook-like laboratory activities. These experiences rarely engage students in a meaningful manner and do not accurately convey what the work of science entails. With funding from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI), we have created more…

The number of students majoring in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) is declining due in part to a lack of student interest (Fairweather 2008; NRC 2012; PCAST 2010). One reason may be the difference between how science is done in school and how it is done in the field (Osborne, Simon, and Collins 2003). An interdisciplinary…

This paper presents the open learning initiatives of the Science Education Institute of the Department of Science and Technology to overcome certain barriers, such as enabling access, cost of replication, timely feedback, monitoring and continuous improvement of learning modules. Using an open-education model, like MIT's (Massachusetts Institute…

The University of North Texas's Texas Academy of Mathematics and Science began admitting students to its 2-year early college entrance science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) program in the fall of 1988. This program provided accelerated entry for top students in Texas in the areas of mathematics and science. Approximately 200…

In 2008, the Centre for Science Education at Sheffield Hallam University teamed up with VT Enterprise (now Babcock International) in their submission of a successful bid to deliver the national STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths) Subject Choice and Careers Project. An integral part of the bid was the promotion of equality and…

Oranges, flying disks, pool noodles, and polyvinyl chloride (PVC) pipe may seem like items discarded after a Rube Goldberg experiment, but in fact, these objects were used in teaching science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM). This article describes a project in which The Center of Ocean Sciences Education Excellence SouthEast (COSEE SE)…

With funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF), ITEEA members will contribute to the development of a hybrid professional development program designed to facilitate the scale-up of an innovative underwater robotics curriculum. WaterBotics[TM] is an underwater robotics curriculum that targets students in middle and high school classrooms…

The Akamai Workforce Initiative (AWI) is a program that seeks to develop a skilled local STEM workforce to meet the needs of Hawai'i's growing high-tech industry. Launched as an internship program in 2002, AWI is the result of a long-term collaboration among the University of California Santa Cruz's Institute for Scientist and Engineer Educators…

Graduate students and post-doctoral scholars at research universities will shape the future of undergraduate education in the natural and social sciences, technology, engineering, and mathematics (the STEM disciplines) in the United States. In 2009 alone, more than 41,000 doctorates were awarded in STEM fields, and if employment trends hold,…

More emphasis should be placed on what can be done to help encourage and prepare students choosing STEM-based majors to enter college, be successful, and graduate. Summer bridge programs can provide pre-college experiences to help attract and retain future STEM majors by exposing them to experiences they would encounter in college math and science…

Building a human-powered flying craft can be much more complicated than one would first imagine. There are no "premade" plans available for this type of craft. In addition, the crafts needed to be built with some "style," or in other words, they should represent something other than a flying machine. The concept of launching a…

"Potemkin schools" is used as the phrase to capture what a US science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) public speciality high school becomes as a result of its institutional branding. By way of an examination of the efforts of one teacher drawn into school branding through his "inquiry-based reform" of an Advanced Chemistry course,…