Thank you for viewing our video!  We are excited to share our project with you. 

The 2017/2018 school year activities enabled students to gain hands-on experiences, applying critical thinking skills, while making college and career connections during the after-school clubs, Saturday sessions, and summer camp. 

We are beginning the fourth year of our grant working with underserved and underrepresented students within 7 middle schools in the Metro Nashville Public School System.  This past year, we worked with 572 students, 17 teachers along with support from community partners and parents.

We are especially interested in effective strategies used to entice students to choose an academic after school activity over sports or non-academic social clubs. 

The i3 Leadership team is available to share their project experiences as well as preliminary findings from our Executive Summary and look forward to any questions/comments about our program.

Deanna Privette & Jeannie Whitlock

This is a wonderful program. Brava to Deanna and Jeannie!!

This does look like a wonderful program.  I'm eager to learn more about  your research agenda.  What questions areyou asking, what data are you collecting, and what are your  preliminary findings?  

Your video mentioned working with community partners—this caught my attention. Can you describe how they have been involved in the project? I was also interested in how the activities for the afterschool, Saturday, and summer camp components were decided or developed. Do these connect to the school science curriculum?

What a wonderful program you have developed to motivate middle school students! How do you decide which subjects and activities are most effective for middle school students? How do you create college and career connections for these students?

We use the after school curriculum Engineering Everywhere to guide our instruction.  We have found that the best integration of stem comes through the engineering lens.  We use current research topics and student interest to assist in developing  additional activities.  

We have created some of the best college and career connections by getting the kids out into the community so they are able to experience some of the things they would in those careers.  For example, at Belmont University, we studied sound engineering.  They prepared activities that would be of interest to the students.  They had students record sound in a variety of locations to hear differences (classroom, stairway, anechoic chamber).  They also showed students a video clip from a TV show and had them sync the sounds and dialogue to the video.  

The student testimonials in the video were wonderful and conveyed the difference your i3 STEM program has had with children.  How are students selected to participate in the Summer Camp?  Is the Summer Camp only open to students in the Metro Nashville Public Schools?  Are there plans to expand this summer opportunity for children in other areas? Thank you.

This program does an incredible job of bringing enriching experiences to the students; these students are constantly learning about our community and how they can contribute to its well being when they grow up. Great job inspiring the young minds!!

Hi Deanna

Great work! Did you monitor change of the grades of participants in STEM courses?

Very exciting program.  Thanks for sharing it.  I'm curious about your partners so I have a few questions:

1. You seem to be leveraging local talent in STEM to bring professionals and academics in for after-school programs and other hands-on activities.  Is that a formal process or has it developed organically? 

2.  Also, how broad is your STEM network?  I'm in the geosciences and historically we fail to fully capitalize on the excitement young people have about dinosaurs, fossils, rocks and natural disasters as they make decisions about their college majors.  Are you working with local geoscientists to showcase local, relevant and lucrative career paths? 

Jonathan - thanks for viewing!

1.) Our after school program focuses on the engineering design process.  Our Saturday sessions have been developed organically connecting community partners with investigations in our after school sessions.  For example, after investigating viruses, we contacted a local university (Vanderbilt) and the school of biomedical engineering.  The graduate students connected with i3 students and were able to not only help students make college connections but career connections as well.

2.) We have yet to study geosciences in our after school program and therefore, have not worked with any local geoscientists.  If and when we do, would you have any suggestions of who/where we could reach out?

Thanks for sharing the inspiration and power of your student participants. What an uplifting video!