The STEM Education Center

Transforming STEM education for all in collaboration with PK-12 educators through professional development, research, & community engagement

A great teacher can spark a love of STEM in future generations of students. Thus, the STEM Education Center is committed to empowering educators with the guidance to lead relevant, integrated, and inclusive STEM learning experiences with their students and communities.

To transform STEM education, we collaborate with PK-12 educators through our:
- undergraduate STEM teacher preparation program,
-  STEM professional development offerings,
-  community engagement,
-  and STEM education research.

Our work is informed by current research and by the lived experiences of educators, learners, and community members.

We believe that everyone has the capacity to do STEM and that everyone should have access to high-quality STEM learning experiences. We seek systemic ways to broaden the participation in STEM, especially those that have been historically excluded in STEM, and work with others towards equity in education. Thus, we are dedicated to the strengthening of STEM learning ecosystems through partnerships among teachers, administrators, community members, and funders — all with the common goal of advancing and transforming STEM education.

Our values, the pillars of our work:
- Empowering Educators
- High-Quality STEM
- Equity, Inclusion, and Anti-racism
- Communities in Partnerships
- Scholarship in STEM Education

BLACK LIVES MATTER

What does #BLM have to do with STEM education? Everything. Our ideals, beliefs, and systems about education are in stark contrast to what we are witnessing in the wake of the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Ahmaud Arbery, as well as the glaring inequities and disproportionate suffering by the Black community exacerbated by the COVID pandemic. We live in an interconnected world where our actions and our inactions have an impact. We can no longer accept institutional racism and power hierarchies that reinforce the status quo. Thus, the STEM Education Center is committed to working with allies in examining our privilege and how we have contributed to institutional inequities, beginning in our own local context. We are particularly interested in having conversation about what we deem as “STEM,” who is it for, who is leading, and how we educate. How do we transform STEM education to be inclusive and anti-racist in asset-based and systemic ways? Now is the time to reimagine and work towards a just and equitable world.