The STEM Foundation: Connecting Students with Tomorrow’s Careers
Since 2008, the Washington State STEM Education Foundation (The STEM Foundation) has engaged the Mid-Columbia region’s top leaders from business, labor, K-12, higher education, and the community at large in initiatives to advance STEM education and career connected learning opportunities. In addition, we design and scale innovative STEM programing across the state and nation. Our impact is leveraged by working as both the Southeastern Washington Network for Career Connect Washington, one of nine regional hubs, and the Mid-Columbia STEM Network, one of 11 Washington STEM-led regional networks.
We focus on helping build a local STEM education infrastructure that enables more of our local youth to meet the ongoing and future demand for STEM-proficient workers. To learn more about the value of STEM education in our region, click here.
The STEM Foundation began with a successful effort to design, fund, and build a STEM high school, Delta High School, in the Tri-Cities. A cornerstone of that work was to create and staff a career connected learning (CCL) system, first within Delta High, the only such high school in eastern Washington, and then eventually to share those best practices across the region. For more on The STEM Foundation’s accomplishments, click here.
Since 2008, the Washington State STEM Education Foundation has engaged the Mid-Columbia region’s top leaders from business, labor, K-12, higher education, and the community at large in initiatives to advance STEM education and career connected learning opportunities. In addition, we design and scale innovative STEM programing across the state and nation. Our impact is leveraged by working as both the Southeastern Washington Network for Career Connect Washington, one of nine regional hubs, and the Mid-Columbia STEM Network, one of 11 Washington STEM-led regional networks.
We focus on helping build a local STEM education infrastructure that enables more of our local youth to meet the ongoing and future demand for STEM-proficient workers. To learn more about the value of STEM education in our region, click here.
The STEM Foundation began with a successful effort to design, fund, and build a STEM high school, Delta High School, in the Tri-Cities. A cornerstone of that work was to create and staff a career connected learning (CCL) system, first within Delta High, the only such high school in eastern Washington, and then eventually to share those best practices across the region. For more on The STEM Foundation’s accomplishments, click here.
Vision
Our vision is to ensure that by 2030:
- Seventy percent of Mid-Columbia students will earn a post-secondary credential by age 26.
- The STEM-proficient workforce will be nearly 100 percent home-grown and include a high percentage of groups typically underserved in STEM careers.
- Local schools—elementary through university—will be highly regarded as national models for business, labor, and community involvement as well as innovative STEM learning.
Several key strategies have enabled The STEM Foundation’s success, and they continue to drive its operations today:
- Secure representative, committed visionary leadership.
- Build community awareness of the need for and benefits of STEM education/CCL, resulting in employer and volunteer involvement and funding for programs.
- Serve as a regional catalyst for community collaboration on STEM education/CCL, leveraging existing community and state resources and initiatives to expand opportunities for students, especially those typically underserved or underrepresented.
In executing these strategies, we
- Award grant funding to support innovative STEM programming.
- Scale a suite of hands-on, experiential learning programs.
- Drive STEM awareness through newspaper articles and ads, radio, TV, social media, newsletters, presentations, blog posts, and our website.
- Inform elected officials, community leaders, and other policymakers, inspiring increased investments in STEM education at the local, state, and national levels.
- Host STEM events which have included dinners, receptions, statewide STEM convenings, volunteer recruitment and training rallies, a town hall, and candidate forum.
Strategies
A Sound
Investment
The STEM Foundation is proud of the return on investment it has delivered to the community.
Since 2008, in collaboration with its partners, it has attracted more than $18 million in investments in STEM education from outside the region. For our latest fiscal year, approximately 76 percent of funding for operations and programs came from outside the region.