• Hi William! Thank you for this feedback on our video. Yes, your synopsis of our model is accurate!
• Supporting students in researching water quality in their hometown watersheds is one of my favorite aspects of the program, too. Students we surveyed indicated that the experience of researching real issues facing their communities and helping to solve these local problems made them more likely to apply to STEM programs in college.
• A former SMART student shot the end of the video, featuring students saying ‘water’ in their first languages, at our Summer Institute. It was meant to represent the universal challenge of water issues and importance of water research, as well as the project’s aim of including students from all backgrounds.
• I apologize for the lack of data presented-- it was difficult to chose what to include in a short, 3-minute video. For these first three years of our project, an external evaluator measured our project’s impact by surveying students and teacher-mentors. The factors we measured amongst participating students include self-reported confidence in performing STEM-related tasks, confidence in taking STEM courses, and interest in pursuing a STEM major or career. For instance, last year, 83% of URM participants (n=18) and 71% of female participants (n=34) reported that the SMART program increased their interest in pursuing a STEM major or career. And while we cannot prove causation, 41% of SMART students are now accepted or enrolled in a STEM degree program (of approximately 125 currently college-eligible SMART students). In the future, we hope to use the S-STEM and T-STEM survey instruments to better measure confidence and attitudes towards STEM (http://miso.ncsu.edu/)...in other words, is our program empowering students and teachers to engage in STEM? We also want to start measuring activity (e.g. the quantity and quality of mentor/mentee interactions and participation in STEM-related activities). Let me know if you have any more questions, or if you’d like me to share more of the data we have collected!

Well done video! It's great that your INCLUDES award will help you scale up an existing, successful project. Can you talk about how you selected the locations where you are expanding nationally? I'm particularly interested because our project (see EarthConnections video) is engaging students in west Atlanta is a project focused on water. We're looking to connect students with community groups to help solve the very challenging problem of water quality in that area. It might be interesting to see if we can work together.  

We are in the process of developing a tool sequencing  that builds community to community site engagement and  have been collecting  data in Maine waters ...as well as in Central PA and FL ...besides our home base in NH.   I'd like to hear more from you both on the issues of risk management and also data organization for others to access for comparison purposes. 

Dear Donna,

• Thank you for your comment! So far, all our partnerships began with university faculty members or high school teachers contacting us because of an interest in implementing our model in their region, or with us identifying dedicated educators and reaching out to them. In other words, our strategy has been more about connecting with people than seeking out particular locations. That being said, our goal is to connect female, underserved and underrepresented students with supported and engaging STEM projects and mentors; therefore, it is a priority of ours to connect with partners in areas serving students from diverse backgrounds.
• I remember your video from the Envisioning Impact video showcase; I am very impressed by the EarthConnections project! I was particularly struck by your well-conceived organizational structure–with a national leadership team and three regional alliances–and the fact that each regional alliance’s work begins with a community meeting.
• I am excited that there might be an opportunity for us to work together, given that, as you mention, the Atlanta EarthConnections alliance is focusing on water, and more broadly, both our projects focus on connecting students to research on a locally-relevant challenge. We would love to speak with you to explore whether we can work together to serve the Atlanta community! Would you recommend that I email you and/or other project leaders to set up a conversation? Thanks!

Dear Betsy,

• Thank you so much for viewing our video and for your questions and comments. I just watched your video and found it very interesting! I am excited about the NH MSP; great work! I see that our projects share a focus on stream studies, a goal of integrating digital tools into water monitoring practices, and the use of engineering principles and skills.
• With regards to risk management, what type of risk are you curious about? Risk of pollution in water sources? Risk of student injury while collecting stream data?
• For data organization, in the past our students from schools all over the state of Maine have inputted their data into a Google Form that feeds into a shared Google Spreadsheet, which everyone can view but only program administrators can edit. This year, one of our students is creating a Google site with links to separate Google Spreadsheets for each participating school, so students can still view the work of other schools but won’t have to scroll through other schools’ data when trying to work with their own. We are also in the process of editing our website (https://umaine.edu/smart/) to include a blog where we will post updates of student activities beyond data collection, including research findings, presentations given, outreach work done in the community, etc. The hope is that this will reach a public audience, outside of the program. Finally, this year we are starting to reach out to local professionals in science and engineering, as well as community leaders, in order to enlist them as supportive stakeholders in the project. These stakeholders will be updated about student activities within the program.
• I would love to hear more about your solutions to data organization/sharing. I’m sure we could learn from your project’s experience! How do you share the data your students collect to portions of local community outside of schools, to other geographic locations, and to the online community? Thanks!

Hi Jake! Thank you for your excellent question.

• Our project is updating its evaluation strategy this year. Moving forward, we will collect data on project success/impact from three groups of people: students, teachers, and administrators/partners.

• For students, we will measure pre/post program confidence and attitudes towards STEM (using the S-STEM instrument, http://miso.ncsu.edu/), knowledge of the science and engineering of stormwater, quantity and quality of interactions with mentors and STEM role models, and level of participation in STEM-related activities.

• From teachers, we will collect pre/post program confidence and attitudes, (using the T-STEM instrument), knowledge of science and engineering of stormwater, quantity and quality of interactions with mentees, and level of participation in our Teacher Professional Learning Community, which is a new addition to the program this year. We are also creating a survey to evaluate the effectiveness of this Teacher PLC.

• From project administrators/partners, we are collecting a monthly reflection and recommendation survey, where we will ask what has been going well in partner interaction or program delivery, what could be improved, what might help support efforts, and what obstacles they face.

• We welcome any suggestions for collecting the aforementioned data, and/or additional measures of success that you think would be valuable!

• Hi Heidi! Thank you for your positive feedback and questions. We see the most important ingredients of the model as 1) engaging students in research that addresses real issues facing their communities and helps to solve these local problems (so far this has involved water, but could be a different topic), 2) learning and applying science and engineering skills, and the use of technology, 3) identifying “champion” mentors for students, 4) connecting students with a diversity of professionals in water and engineering (whom we call “stakeholders”). We expect those 4 aspects of the project will transfer well to partners across the country.

• As part of our mutually reinforcing activities, we encourage our partners to adopt our process in a way that fits their location and demographic specific needs. For instance, given local conditions, SMART students in California might focus their research on water conservation. We hope to use continuous communication (monthly feedback from partners, in addition to real-time calls to troubleshoot challenges) to allow regional partners to learn from each other’s successes, strengthening the collaborative as a whole.

• One area that will likely vary with location is the identity of mentors and stakeholders. For instance, in Maine our mentors are high school science teachers. Meanwhile, our partner in California, based out of ReNUWIt (Reinventing the Nation's Urban Water Infrastructure), is engaging graduate students and postdoctoral scholars who are conducting stormwater research to serve as mentors. Stakeholder panels will look different in each state, as they can include a variety of individuals who are interested in the betterment of their local community (community leaders, educators, parents, government officials, industry representatives, non-profit workers…).