US2020 began two years ago with an ambitious goal to match 1 million STEM mentors with underrepresented students from kindergarten through college via youth serving nonprofits by the year 2020. At the 2015 White House Science Fair, US2020 announced the first STEM Mentoring Awards to be presented this July in Washington, DC. Here, they discuss their work, the STEM Mentoring Awards, and building a quality driven STEM Mentoring Movement.
Could you briefly describe the work and mission of US2020?
US2020 developed from a White House call to generate large scale, innovative solutions to our science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) education challenges. Our mission is to
Providing quality access to STEM education and careers to all children, especially underrepresented and under-served children, is an economic and social justice imperative for the United States and is directly linked to the broader challenge of unequal opportunity.
Through corporate and nonprofit partnerships at the national level and coalitions built at the city level, US2020 is working to scale the STEM mentoring field, to align the field on common metrics, and to advance a focus on quality.
Broadly speaking, how do you perceive the success of ongoing STEM initiatives? Are there any particularly successful approaches you’ve identified?
There have been a number of STEM programs undertaken in the past few years many as part of President Obama’s Educate to Innovate initiative. We’re interested in learning more about student impact metrics from these programs as a way to further inform our work.
Just this past spring, Cisco implemented a STEM Mentoring Week engaging more than 600 employees and 400 underrepresented students with a program created in collaboration with US2020. Designed to be meaningful for students and as a “steppingstone” to engaging mentors at scale in long-term mentorships, we’ve received positive feedback from everyone involved. One hundred percent of students surveyed rate the event as “Excellent” or Good.” More than 90% of Cisco volunteers surveyed were interested in more STEM volunteerism. The results from this pilot are encouraging.
We’ve built our initiative around engaging STEM professionals as mentors for underrepresented youth because many of the students we serve have never met an engineer or a visited a science lab. Dr. Sally Ride once said, “You can’t be what you can’t see. [1]” Children that have never met someone that works in a STEM field are less likely to pursue STEM. That’s an issue and something STEM mentorship can address.
We’ve also focused on partnering with youth serving organizations that engage students particularly young students in hands-on activities in multi-session programs. Hands-on activities spark interest, which is an important step in improving diversity in STEM. Engaging STEM professionals with the same student or group of students repeatedly, even for an informal mentoring model, has been shown to make a difference for under-served youth. [2]
At the close of the 2014-2015 academic year, US2020 collected evaluation data from both STEM mentors and students served via our national and City Network partners. We’re excited to glean further insights about best practices in STEM mentoring and look forward to sharing our findings.
Would you please describe a typical STEM Mentor?
The STEM mentors we’ve engaged are typically atypical. In the US2020 newsletter, Bridging STEM, we regularly highlight a STEM Mentor of the Month nominated by a partner organization. In the past year, we have featured men, women, college students, seasoned professionals, and young professionals of various ethnicities. However, regardless of their backgrounds, these STEM mentors do have one thing in common. They all possess a passion for their careers and for sharing what they do with under-served students.
What are the benefits for a student interacting with a STEM mentor?
A number of studies have shown that students with STEM mentors receive both academic and developmental benefits. Students have more confidence in their capabilities and more knowledge of STEM careers. We published a piece on our website titled The Case for the STEM Mentoring Movement, which details the data gathered regarding the benefits of STEM mentorship for students. But perhaps the most telling example we can offer is this. We often see that mentored students go on to college, begin their careers, and return to the programs where they were first encouraged to pursue STEM only this time as mentors.
Does it benefit the mentor as well?
Absolutely! And there is both research and anecdotal evidence that support this. Studies have shown that corporate volunteerism improves employees’ physical and emotional health. [3] Additionally, volunteering has been shown to improve competencies across a range of professional skills including communication, coaching, and negotiating. [4] Skills development is of particular interest to Millennials who value and are committed to cause work, but also seek a professional return on investment for their efforts. [5]
Hands-on experiences are vital to fostering interest in STEM disciplines, and US2020 will be honoring STEM mentors at the 2015 STEM Mentoring Awards and Symposium. How did this event come about, and what kind of submissions have you received?
The STEM Mentoring Awards were designed with three objectives in mind: to recognize and encourage exceptional work in the STEM mentoring field; to surface and share best practices; and to engage STEM leaders and build momentum for this work.
Our Co-Founding Sponsors of the STEM Mentoring Awards, Chevron and Tata Consultancy Services, have demonstrated their long standing commitment to increasing student interest and engagement in STEM. They immediately understood that the awards were an opportunity to build recognition for STEM mentoring as an important tool in education reform and signed on to turn the awards from an idea into a reality.
We are excited to share that for these inaugural STEM Mentoring Awards, US2020 received submissions from more than 80 organizations in 30 cities representing 13 states across the country.
In addition to the Most Innovative Hands-on Project, you’ll also be presenting awards for Excellence in Volunteer Experience and Excellence in Corporate Culture. How important is it for STEM professionals and their companies to actively engage youth interested in STEM?
Actively engaging STEM professional and their companies is an imperative and a central tenet of our model. We truly believe that it’s in all of our best interests to close the opportunity gap for under-served students, to address the diversity issue in STEM, and to educate a workforce ready for the highly-skilled, STEM jobs being created in the United States more quickly than we can fill them.
How can people interested in mentoring get involved?
Anyone interested in getting involved can visit our website, us2020.org, to create an account and find volunteer opportunities near them. And while we focus on opportunities for STEM professionals, we welcome professionals from other disciplines to get involved as well. Some or our partners offer mentor opportunities in other disciplines in addition to STEM topics.
Is there anything else you’d like to say about US2020 and STEM Mentoring?
Thank you for the opportunity to talk about US2020 and this important work. We’ll leave you with a mentor’s reflection from this academic year:
“I volunteer in … a neighborhood that is only a few blocks from an Ivy League school. Although close in proximity, the students in this neighborhood cannot be further away from the educational experience that students [there] receive. This neighborhood does not have the resources or funds to give their students what they deserve. As a first-generation American woman of color, and as a biomedical engineer, I am dedicated to ensuring that minority and under-resourced communities will not be left behind as technological and scientific innovation continues, but rather that they will help to lead the charge. [STEM Mentoring] is the means through which I can fulfill this goal.”
The video below summarizes the mission of US2020 and their partnership with Discovery to help accomplish it:
Image Credit: Lawrence Luk
References:
1 https://hbr.org/2012/09/sallyride
2 http://www.mentoring.org/mentoringeffect/fact_sheet
3 http://cdn.volunteermatch.org/www/about/UnitedHealthcare_VolunteerMatch_Do_Good_Live_Well_Study.pdf4 http://www.cityoflondon.gov.uk/business/economicresearchandinformation/researchpublications/Documents/rese arch2010/Volunteering_The%20Business%20Case.pdf
5 http://www.csrwire.com/press_releases/32364MillennialMindsetDeloitteSurveyFindsWorkersWhoFrequentlyVolunteerAreHappierwithCareerProgression