STEM Student Research: building leaders, engaging mentors, and exciting student through school, university, industry partnerships

The Office of STEM Education Partnerships (OSEP) at Northwestern University, in partnership with the Research and Development STEM Learning Exchange, the Illinois Math and Science Academy (IMSA), and numerous high schools and industry partners, proposes the program titled “STEM Student Research: building leaders, engaging mentors, and exciting students through school, university, industry partnerships.” The goal of this program is to support the growth and development of independent student research courses, clubs, and curricula through targeted teacher professional development opportunities and teacher, student, and mentor research experiences and engagement. This program is designed to achieve the following outcomes: · Increase high school teachers’ ability to facilitate student-directed, inquiry-based research projects. · Build the mentoring capacity in industry and academia for student research specifically, and STEM education initiatives more broadly. · Engage high school students in authentic STEM learning and build awareness of and interest in STEM careers among those students. STEM Student Research will engage participants from K-12, university, and industry throughout the state of Illinois and beyond. The project will strategically focus on CPS, particularly the five new Early College STEM Schools (ECSS), and schools who are partnering with the Research and Development STEM Learning Exchange but not exclude participants from other geographic areas. This project will provide teacher professional development, mentoring outreach and training, and opportunities for students to showcase their research projects. We will build capacity for scalability and replication of the teacher professional development and mentoring components of this program.