Why Minnesota?

A vision, an innovative and effective approach, a radio broadcast, a geologist, and a friend's family foundation willing to take a risk.....that's why.

Several months have passed since that fateful day in March, when I, a professional geologist living in Bloomington, Minnesota, heard an NPR broadcast about Science from Scientists' in-school STEM enrichment program. Listening to the 4th and 5th graders talk about how much fun they were having in science classes made the hair on my arm stand up. I was reminded of that little Karlene, who, on a field trip with her 7th grade science teacher, Mr. Hanson, touched the then-oldest rock on the planet (Ely Greenstone at 3.8 billion years) and decided that science was cool.

During the broadcast, one of the Science from Scientist instructors said she is routinely asked at the end of the year for her autograph by the students, because she is a real scientist. If children finish their program with the sentiment that scientists are “rock stars,” they are truly succeeding! I wanted to learn more about the organization and visited their website.

The nation has a STEM workforce crisis, the extent of which I had no idea!

I learned that, as a country, we are not producing enough STEM workers to take advantage of the growth in STEM jobs and that lack of content competency and low interest in STEM are drivers of this workforce gap. I cringed when I read that U.S. students are routinely outperformed by their international peers - we rank 20th in the world in science literacy. I gasped when I read the Business Higher Education Foundation determination that, by the time students reach high school, a whopping 83% report lacking proficiency and/or interest in STEM. Knowing what science ultimately meant to me as a child, a women, and a geologist, I wanted to get involved.

The organization had a grand vision!

Science from Scientists was founded in 2002 by Dr. Erika Ebbel Angle, an MIT graduate with a doctorate in biochemistry from Boston University School of Medicine, in 2002. She successfully drew attention to the newly-formed 501c(3) non-profit as her platform during her winning bid for Miss Massachusetts in 2004. Erikaʼs life was strongly shaped by experiential science, and, as Erika likes to say, “Science from Scientists gives all students the chance to experience the joy of doing real experiments, making real discoveries and appreciating how amazing our world is.”

Erika's vision was to create a metrics-based, scalable STEM enrichment program that provides high quality and curriculum relevant lessons to students in grades 4 through 8 (the age when students of all backgrounds begin considering what they want to be and do when they grow up), inspires children, helps classroom teachers, and delivers measurable results. "That sounds great," I thought, "but does it work?"

The organization demonstrates innovation and measureable impact!

Science from Scientists improves the attitudes and aptitudes of 4th through 8th graders in STEM by sending real, charismatic scientists into classrooms every other week throughout the school year to guide the students through hands-on STEM lessons that are aligned with state academic benchmarks and standards. Because the program takes place during school hours and the teachers work elbow-to-elbow alongside our scientists to select and deliver the sequence of lessons for their classrooms, the program reaches all students, and not just those who self-select, and contains an “embedded” professional development program to help classroom teachers.

As a scientist, I am data driven, and Science from Scientists had the data to demonstrate the impacts of their program. They track student scores on state science assessments to observe post-program improvement in student scores (average increase of 17% in number of students scoring proficient or higher on the state science assessment). They administer pre- and post-lesson quizzes to assess the effectiveness of each lesson and student's retention of the subject matter (and see an average 16% improvement in STEM knowledge retention). They collect semiannual teacher surveys to verify that the program is piquing student interest in STEM and complementing teachers' curriculum objectives (and they find that 90% of teachers indicate the program has been "very influential" on students' interest towards STEM).

The in-school program improves student relationships!

Most convincing to me that I needed to get involved was the results of a third-party evaluation of the program completed during the 2014-2015 academic year. PEAR (Program in Education, After-school, and Resiliency), a joint initiative of Harvard University and McLean Hospital, found that, after one year in the Science from Scientists' program, 82% of students reported more interest in science-related careers, 87% of students reported improvements in their perseverance and critical thinking skills, and 85% reported improvements in relationships with their peers and adults. I was sold.

BUT, the organization was not in Minnesota!

They were only located in Massachusetts and California - the technology hub that Minnesota is was completely missing from the Science from Scientists location map. That's where a friend, fired up by my enthusiasm for the program and my desire to bring the program to Minnesota, came in. Her family foundation, the Newton Family Foundation, donated monies to seed fund the Minnesota office of Science from Scientists.