Bradley McLain

Link to Grant

Latina SciGirls is developing a Spanish-language series of half-hour television episodes showing groups of girls and their Latina STEM mentors investigating culturally relevant science and engineering problems of interest to Hispanic communities across the U.S. Television mentors and girls will be filmed in Hispanic communities in the southwest and southeastern U.S. and represent various cultural backgrounds and ethnicities including Mexican, Central and South American, Puerto Rican and Caribbean. The project is also creating a series of family and girl-friendly online video profiles of Latina STEM professionals showing the daily life of a female scientist or engineer, and will provide opportunities to connect girls and their families with in-person Latina role models via community outreach in diverse Hispanic communities across the country.

Link to Grant

This three-year professional development initiative is designed to help career and technical education (CTE) educators and guidance counselors recruit and retain more girls in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) pathways, specifically in technology and engineering.

Funding support to sustain the site after launch will be derived from minimal participation fees from industry side partners and fees for different levels of evaluation services as desired for specific matched projects.

Based on organizational or program level profiles and opportunity articulation, STEMLink will make it easier, cheaper, and less time consuming for STEM industry organizations to find appropriate school partners and establish partnerships to support experiential STEM learning outreach activities to K12 students and teachers. STEMLink will include a back-end database that actively seeks appropriate partners based on user profile inputs and makes recommendations for potential matches. In addition, STEMLink will include reporting and assessment tools and assistance to track the progress and outcomes of matches made in the system. Evaluation is an often neglected but essential component for establishing ROI for companies, educational impact for schools, and discovering what works, why and for whom so that future efforts can benefit.