The Chief Science Officers initiative was developed to enhance student voice in the conversation of STEM and innovation. We would love to hear from you...

What type of opportunities are you aware of that increase student voice in STEM in your area?

Are you interested to build a cabinet of Chief Science Officers in your area? Express your interest to join the movement through the online discussion.

Sincerely,

Jeremy

Can you tell us a bit more about how the students who are elected by their peers to participate?  They seem highly motivated and I'm wondering if this program builds on their pre-existing STEM interests or is trying to seed interest in a broader range of students who are elected because the are leaders and not necessarily interested in STEM?  

You have invited others interested in similar programs.  Have you found a way to scale your successes?  If so, do you envision them as cloning your successful program or is there more local adaptation needed?  

Inspiring to see the level of enthusiasm and the public private partnerships that come together to enable student voice.  Are you documenting the outcomes of what students say and do....e.g. new "products" they have imagined or developed; contributions they have made to policy or program ideas for local, state or even national levels?   

Yes, especially with our ITEST grant which supports an team to look at process and impact outcomes. For the year prior, we did put together an table summarizing what we captured as outcomes for the CSOs but likely missed quite a few. See here. Hope is with the eval team to have a better process to capture much more. In addition, we are working to have a best practices portal where CSOs can post their own best practices online and infuse their voice in the process.

What are the types of questions that adults are asking students?  Are there particular questions or topics where adult decision-makers are particularly open to student leadership or input?

Hi, Thomas,

A lot of it depends upon the setting the CSOs are positioned in. A few examples:

- CSOs worked with Congressional Rep Grijalva to develop a brief about barriers and solutions to the STEM workforce. He used this info with his peers in Congress.

- CSOs took part in a panel moderated by Klaus from Change the Equation to inform Phoenix area funders about the current climate in STEM education

- CSOs ran a workshop about starting a robotics club in a school at a local STEM conference.

- CSOs took part in a focus groups with our regional LNRG team to provide feedback on a STEM/Education intervention they had in mind.

Overall, adults are usually not used to students being so vocal and knowledgeable about the STEM climate and tend to be very receptive when they speak, especially in non-traditional business and community settings. Given the students are the end user and in school most the day, they have a lot of important insights to add in the conversation.

Love this discussion and reflecting on our Kenyan situation and specifically CEMASTEA where the Cabinet Secretary (CS) mandated us to start 47 STEM schools in the 47 counties(equivalent to districts). The challenge so far is what would be a good STEM seconadry school in the Kenyan context. It is also expected that principals are sensitized STEM and teachers trained! 

Any content areas that would be worth considering folks?  

Our very able Dr Tom Mboya is driving this agenda in CEMASTEA and I would wish him to join this conversation as they go to develop the content to take teachers through to be able to start off STEM in our selected schools so far.

A baseline survey was already carried out on STEM readiness of the schools and the report is about to be out.

John 

on watching one of the videos I observe that:

1. students lead in their won learning rather than being told what is to be learned

2. the activities focus the learners in a specific way to develop confidence and to be critical thinkers and NOT focused on examinations!

3. the environment is very conducive to develop STEMness in learners what Dr. Tom calls 'C-STEM'! to mean classroom CLIMATE! It is not a scenario where teachers dominate in the classroom and learners 'fear' them in case they make 'mistakes' and be rebuked!

Would be interesting to try and get CSOs out in Kenya. Is this something you would be interested to talk more about?

Sure this would be great! I need to connect you to our coordinator at CEMASTEA, Dr. Tom Mboya to have further discussions with him! He is a great guy and with a lot of ideas on STEM. His email is: tjokaya2015@gmail.com 

Great! I've just followed up with Tom.

Hi Jeremy, I love the enthusiasm and empowerment students exhibited in your video.

How long do students stay in CSO program? Time commitment during the school year and summer? Also, what type of research questions and data is your project addressing?

If you are not familiar with Roadtrip Nation (http://roadtripnation.com), you may want to review their STEM career tools and possibly partner with them on a future project targeting to further support your STEM ambassadors. I'm happy to connect you if you're interested.   

First it would be great if you could make an intro with your contacts at roadtripnation. My email for reference is jeremyb@azcommerce.com. 

To address your questions:

- We are finding about 25% stay on for a second season (although we are in our second year so only have one year of data). Our hope is for this to get closer to 50% as the 2nd year students are amazing. They have the first year to get accustomed with the program and the second to really work on community action. It will be interesting to see if we get any 3rd years for next season.

- Time commitment is 2-3 days during the summer institute. During the academic year we ask the students to attend at least 2 opportunities in the community. Each of these can take a full day of school. In addition, we look for students to make a commitment at their school. Depending upon the project it can range in time but hope they commit about 1 hour a week. In addition they post to our online Canvas community. This should take about 15min per week.

- We have 2 research questions. The first is the impact on student attitudes about STEM and STEM careers of the generation student populations, i.e. we are trying to assess the impact 2 CSOs as a school can have on their school culture. The second looks at the types of resources a student ambassador can garner from the local community such as donations, sponsorships, STEM professional time, programs and etc.

Hi Jeremy, thank you so much for your thorough response.  What a neat project!  I look forward to seeing if your student retention continues to increase and how your support and activities change with students during year 2. Btw, do students receive credit for participation? 

Regarding RTN, I am sending an introduction email to you and Mike.  Please let me know if you need anything additional these.  You will find Mike to be a great guy and one who is willing to partner.   I think leveraging your resources will be added value to students and the field.  

Thanks again for sharing your project and for the wonderful work you're doing!

Hi Jeremy, FYI- I just connected you and Mike. Please let me know if you need any thing else from my end. 

All the best! 

Boozhoo Jeremy and team:   I love the idea of giving voice to the students about STEM. I'm wondering about parent(s)/guardian(s), communities, and tribal governments?

miigwech, April

Dual-enrollment credits may be a possibility...so glad you're looking into this!  Good luck with Mike.