Poster – SUNY/NYAS STEM Mentoring Program Statewide Scale Up Project

This poster was presented at the 2016 Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) PI Meeting held in Bethesda, MD on February 29-March 2. The United States is facing a crisis: not enough students are being trained in the areas of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) to support and foster economic growth. In response, the State University of New York (SUNY) and the New York Academy of Sciences (The Academy) are collaborating to train SUNY graduate students and post-doctoral fellows to deliver mentoring and STEM content to underserved middle-school children in afterschool programs. Since 2010, as part of the Afterschool STEM Mentoring Program, The Academy has successfully trained graduate students within the New York City area; to date they have reached >10,000 middle school students with curricula in areas such as genetics, mathematics, and space science. At the suggestion of SUNY Chancellor Nancy Zimpher, who serves as the Chair of the Academy's Board of Governors, we have developed a collaboration whereby SUNY graduate students and post-doctoral fellows learn pedagogy and content via an online course, and then are placed in underserved afterschool programs in New York State. The online course was developed by faculty and SUNY ESC. After a thorough evaluation of the course, curriculum, and methods, the program goal is replication throughout the United States.