Thank you very much for your comments and questions, Sally! Our study is focused on following the students from the participation in the two-week in the summer enrichment program through a year of follow-up booster activities. We will continue to invite the students and their families to engage in events that are open to the public that we offer at the university.

We are very interested in the impact that STEMWoW has on the mentors. That component was not originally part of the project, but we quickly realized that it needed to be, and we started collecting data.

This applied to our program as well. What was the experience like for your mentors? Were they trained at all? Do they just help with the 2-week program once or do they provide on-going help with boosters?

Thank you for your interest and for your great questions, Jason! 

The mentors (we call them "pod leaders") participate in four Saturday 5.5-hour sessions, one per month, during the spring, and then they participate in one week of intensive training in the summer. The training program includes instruction on the underlying theories and practices of mentorship in general and youth mentorship in particular. pod leaders explore central questions including What is mentoring? What is near-peer mentoring? What are effective mentoring practices with underrepresented groups and Hispanic youth, specifically? What are the benefits, drawbacks, challenges and dos and don’ts of mentoring? In subsequent sessions, pod leaders explore strengths vs. deficit-based approaches to the education of underrepresented and Latino students, understand the unique challenges and opportunities of Latinx students in relation to STEM, learn pedagogical practices for supporting the STEM learning of students, learn the World of Work model, and deepen their STEM content knowledge.

We are in the middle of preparing the second group of pod leaders. For the first year, we did not plan for the pod leaders to be involved with the booster sessions. Part of the responsibilities of the new group we are working with now is to contact families before the booster sessions and to be involved in as many of those as possible. 

We did schedule some of the booster sessions to overlap with part of two if the training sessions for the new group of pod leaders, so they had the opportunity to engage with the families.

Thank you so much for your great questions, Kelli! Here are some answers:

>How did you help the student participants to see that they had a place in STEM?

There were several ways that we worked to help the participants see that they have a place in STEM. First, they had the pod leaders (mentors), some from their community, as role models. Once the students knew the pod leaders, each day one or two pod leaders gave five minute presentations to share information about them with the students (the students loved these presentations and looked forward to them). We also invited scientists from the different priority workforce sectors in San Diego, some to have conversations with small groups of students, and some to give presentations to the whole group. Additionally, they participated in STEM hands-on activities and explorations of many different types, giving them the opportunity to find some activities they particularly enjoyed. Then, their explorations of their interests, values and strengths, together with World of Work activities where they saw how these interests, values and strengths fit in different STEM careers helped them see that they can be part of STEM.

 

>Who were the role models and mentors that worked with students or whose stories you shared with students? The video suggested that facilitators are near -peers in the sense that they are not that much older than the student participants.

We recruited the "pod leaders" through an application process that yielded a wonderful, diverse group of college students, graduate students and teachers in the early stage of their career with an interest or studies in STEM. Other role models were faculty at the university and STEM professionals from the community, with an emphasis on finding people from the Latinx community and others who looked like the students.

 

>What was the role of the facilitator? Did they lead activities and lessons or was there more to their role?

Pod leaders (facilitators) work with each other and faculty mentors to develop and facilitate STEM and World of Work lessons. During the 2-week summer enrichment program they focus their attention on a small group 5-6 students, but work with all students. They:
 Engage students in activities that help them discover their individual interests, strengths, and values,
expose them to an array of viable STEM careers, and provide hands-on STEM experience.
 Provide instructional support during the explorations, including special assistance for students needing
extra support.
 Facilitate activities that give students the opportunity to express themselves creatively, and give them
a sense of accomplishment that comes from mastering techniques and completing projects.
 Support physical fitness activities that help students develop leadership and teamwork skills.
 Prepare students to present their work to the families and community.
 Practice group management skills to engage all students in daily activities.

They also:

 Administer pre- and post-assessments to the students.
 Lead a daily reflection and track student’s individual progress each day for the assigned students.
 Safely escort students to activities and ensure that they are properly hydrated and safe from the sun.
 Monitor the interest, health and safety of students and refer them to the program mentors, as needed.
 Take the initiative to ensure that students have the best experience possible.
 Exemplify a positive attitude towards learning, exploring, failing, and persevering.
 Engage with students and their families via social media throughout the year.

>Finally, what evidence do you have of how these facilitators influenced participants?

We are still working on data analysis, but, many of the students reported that they really loved working with the pod leaders. I think the most compelling evidence was when many of the students at the end of the program asked how they could become pod leaders themselves in the future.

Thank you so much for your interest in STEMWoW, Amy! We responded to Kelli's and Jason's questions above. Please let us know any other questions you have.

Thanks for your interest in STEMWoW, Dagen! 

Thank you, Acacia, for asking those good questions!

We view "hands-on projects" as a medium to spark students' STEM situational interest. We link the STEM experience with the San Diego’s Five Priority Workforce Sectors through invited expert Ted Talks, expert interview, and virtual reality experience aiming to show students a variety of STEM career possibilities that they may have not been aware of previously. We hope that the situational interest along with the understanding of students' "possible self" can help students form a STEM identity or a sustained interest in STEM. 

Regarding the impacts, we also partner with the school district to obtain students' test scores. We are also conducting focus groups with students, families, and pod leaders to further understand the program impacts.   

Great question, Peter! 

Since this is funded by NSF-AISL grant, our work for this project is primarily in the informal learning setting. But the school district that we partner has integrated some exciting pieces on STEM and Career and Self Exploration in their curriculum which is likely to extend the summer experience to the formal settings and help students to build the connections. We are fortunate to have a partner like this. If the formal setting does not support the identified STEM interest or career, the newly formed STEM identity may be deconstructed and not likely to sustain. In an ideal world, we should leverage the collective partnerships between formal and informal educators and families to build a shared vision and a collaborative action plan to provide rich and meaningful connections between the learning activities at school, out-of-school, and at home and build a communication system to exchange feedbacks regularly to best support students' interests and learning.  

Thank you, Sara. What an exciting idea to have a North version of STEM WoW. We would love to discuss this further. One of the most exciting aspects of the program has been the partnership with one of our local school districts. Many of the students in this district would have not access to our university or its resources wee it not for STEMWoW. So, in addition to helping them build a love for STEM, they are gaining access to the campus. If you would like to speak further, we can be contacted at joi.spencer@sandiego.edu.

Thank you so much for commenting on our video. 

Thank you Karletta!

We are constantly working to find ways to get more students to show up for the Boosters- which occur on Saturdays. Any suggestions on this would be so helpful.

Joi

Thank you very much for viewing our video and discussion and for you great question! We have learned a lot through this wonderful interdisciplinary project. Some of the lessons we have learned the "hard way" come from the fact that our STEMWoW team is composed of 5 very enthusiastic people from different units on campus (the Teaching and Learning Department in the School of Leadership and Education Sciences, the Shiley-Marcos School of Engineering, the Jacobs Institute for Innovation in Education, and the Mathematics Department in the College of Arts and Sciences), which is also the reason this has been such an amazing experience. It's been a pleasure working with my colleagues from different areas, and I've enjoyed stretching and growing with them. Two lessons:

1) Less is more: Last summer we ran our 2-week summer experience twice. Each team member provides a rich contribution to the project, so, when we first created the schedule for our 2-week summer enrichment experience, we had a very packed schedule. Each activity had a lot of possibility for much deeper exploration than we could do in the scheduled time, and we needed to make many adjustments to our days. For the second iteration in the first summer, we knew what to expect, so there were fewer adjustments. As we prepare for this summer, we are working on having fewer, more integrated activities so the students can delve deeper into each of those.

2) Be clear in communication: There were times when we were not precise about who was responsible for taking care of a particular task (who is in charge of bringing the iPads, for example), and we had to scramble at the last moment. 

Thank you very much for viewing our video! I absolutely agree with you that Exposure, exposure, exposure.... to high quality educational experiences is a key to ignite and/or fuel students' interest in STEM fields. Students can't develop interest in or knowledge of something that they have not been introduced to.

Thank you Julie for your kinds words of appreciation. They mean a lot to us....this project is a huge team effort and we look forward to sharing our learned lessons and findings with students, parents, fellow researchers and others who are interested in this type of programs.