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Kristine Bullock
SE Hub Manager
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Last Friday night of every month, 5:00-8:00 pm, Iowa Children's Museum
March 22 - 25, UNI Dome
SE Advisory Board Meeting
March 27, 1:00-3:00 pm, Kirkwood Regional Center at the University of IA
FIRST Tech Challenge North Super Regional Event
March 30-April 1, U.S. Cellular Center/DoubleTree Hotel, Cedar Rapids
April 8-16
April 21, 11:00-4:00, Bettendorf High School
April 22, 10:00-2:00, Southeastern Community College, West Burlington
April 26-29, St. Louis, MO
Anamosa STEM Night
April 27 6-8 pm Anamosa MS
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| Submit Your STEM Event HERE |
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| The Iowa Governor's STEM Advisory Council is a bipartisan collaboration of legislators, educators, businesses, students and families to increase STEM awareness and opportunities in Iowa. To learn more about STEM programming going on in southeast Iowa, visit us at http://se.iowastem.org. |
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Students Discover STEM With Making STEM Connections
 Making STEM Connections has once again been named a STEM Scale-Up Program! This 2017-2018 STEM Scale-Up Program from The Science Center of Iowa is intended for students in grade levels K-8. The program provides a kit, including tools, teacher resources and lessons to inspire the maker mentality through highly engaging, interactive, and safe experiences.
For the 2016-2017 STEM Scale-Up program, 54 educators from 24 organizations received the Making STEM Connections program.
Michelle Bentler from Richardson Elementary School in Fort Madison was one of the program awardees for the 2016-2017 school year. In her school's library, she planned a theme for the new makerspace for each of the four school quarters in order to feature different subjects of STEM.
Bentler explained that the new makerspace allows students to work on "improving our communication, perseverance, and teamwork skills."
"I never would have believed the training and maker kit would lead me to change my way of thinking and my way of teaching," described Bentler. "I've learned that less instruction is more creativity."
For more information on the Making STEM Connections STEM Scale-Up Program, click
here. To learn more about all of the 2017-2018 STEM Scale-Up Programs, visit our
website.
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2nd Annual STEM Pre-Service Teacher Conference a Success
According to the
2015-16 Iowa STEM Evaluation Report, three quarters of beginning high school teachers teaching advanced STEM courses return for a second year but after four years, the retention rate drops to 40% and 33% after five years. Although the report does not provide information about why the teachers left, conversations with various groups across the state indicate that the first couple of years of teaching are hard and rookie teachers crave supports.
Friday's portion of the event included a networking reception, a dinner, and keynote speakers Melissa Greene from
Belmond-Klemme Community School District and Matt Degner from
Iowa City Community School District.
The event on Saturday featured breakout sessions with administrators, educators, and faculty members from several institutions across Iowa. The breakout sessions featured topics like using technology in the physics classroom, resources for pK-3 teachers, sustainable energy, designing inclusive STEM courses, and more.
Hannah Kroska, a graduate student at the University of Iowa focusing on secondary science, said the resources she has gained from the event will help her as she begins her teaching career.
"Having partnerships with current teachers not only improves student learning, but improves you as
a
teacher, makes you feel more confident in your craft and I think it makes you better at your job and your job more enjoyable," said Kroska.
Shannon Ellis, a teacher with the METRO High School STEAM Academy in Cedar Rapids, said the
conference takeaways are invaluable.
"These students who are here today have an opportunity to talk to veteran teachers," said Ellis. "School is changing and we need to change with it. These future teachers are asking questions and getting answers they wouldn't get otherwise."
Nearly 110 STEM pre-service teachers, faculty members and veteran teachers from 21 colleges and school districts across the state attended the conference.
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STEM Festivals in Full Swing!
Students and families in Linn and Jefferson Counties enjoyed the first in a series of second semester STEM festivals
In the Southeast STEM Region, late winter is a busy time with the kickoff of a series of STEM Festivals, scale-up applications, community outreach and more. This year, the Southeast Hub partnered with community members in Linn and Jefferson Counties to host two STEM festivals for K-12 students and their families. The Linn County STEM Festival was held February 21 at the Linn County Kirkwood Regional Center in Hiawatha. Nearly 900 people attended the event for its inaugural debut at the Center after many years at the Cedar Rapids Library. Students were able to explore multiple Kirkwood Career Academies, engage in robotics demonstrations, test their skills on a texting and driving simulator, generate energy and more.
On February 27, about 450 people from 18 different communities attended the Jefferson County STEM Festival at the Fairfield Arts and Convention Center. Through a partnership with Fairfield Community School District, French-Reneker-Associates, Great Prairie AEA, Indian Hills Community College, and the Southeast STEM Hub, students were able to create jewelry using circuits, program spheros, build towers, discover the soil system and water cycle, and much more.
Businesses and community organizations are a critical to the success of these events. If you have a great idea for an hands-on exhibit or are interested in learning more, please visit our
STEM Festival page.
We are currently recruiting exhibitors for the Southeast Iowa STEM Festival April 22 at Southeastern Community College in West Burlington.
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Flourish & Bots Inspire Girls and Seek Mentors
According to Change the Equation, women continue to be scarcely represented in engineering, computing and advanced manufacturing. In fact, only 12% of the engineering, 26% of the computing, and 10% of the advanced manufacturing workforces are women. A group of girls in the Quad Cities is determined to close this gap by inspiring young girls to go into STEM.
The FIRST Tech Challenge (FTC) team Flourish & Bots from Bettendorf has started the Flourish & Bots Project which will provide mentorship for FIRST Lego League Jr. (FLL Jr.) and FIRST Lego League (FLL) teams in the community. The young girls will be working with women in the community including Southeast Regional Advisory Board Member Chris Cournoyer, Pleasant Valley Community School District Robotics Coordinator Theresa Barber, and St. Ambrose University Assistant Professor Jodi Prosise to learn hardware and software skills that can be shared with younger students. The team is seeking additional female mentors who are engineers, computer scientists, and designers to work with the girls.
This winter and spring, the girls have participated in the Pleasant Valley Schools Hour of Code, Introduce a Girl to Engineering Day at St. Ambrose University, and will have a hands-on booth at the Quad Cities National Robotics Week Showcase April 8 at the Putnam Museum.
By 2018, the state of Iowa has committed to providing 5,000 mentors as part of the Million Women Mentors project. To learn more about this team and how you can get involved in mentorship, visit
www.FlourishAndBots.com
and
http://mwmia.org/.
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Available Resources
A collection of resources for STEM educators, businesses, and community members
Pint Size Science Kit Check-Out
New BeeBot mats have been received and are available for checkout! Four types of kits from the Science Center of Iowa that are designed for 3-5 year old students are currently available for checkout. If interested in checking out a kit or for more information on the kits that are available, click
here.
Renewable Energy Activity Kits
The Southeast STEM Hub is proud to partner with the ATEEC Interactive Learning Lab at Eastern Iowa Community College to offer renewable energy activity kits to educators throughout the southeast region. Thanks to the Roy J. Carver Charitable Trust, ATEEC is able to offer a variety of kits that are sure to engage any student.
If interested in checking out a kit or for more information on the available kits, click
here
A World In Motion Activity Kit Check-Out
Three types of kits designed for primary or elementary students are currently available for checkout.
If interested in checking out a kit or for more information on the kits that are available, click
here.
Materials may be checked out for 6 weeks. They can be picked up and returned at the Kirkwood Regional Center at the University of Iowa, 2301 Oakdale Boulevard, Coralville, IA 52241
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Please replace any consumables you use.
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Sincerely,
Kristine Bullock
SE Iowa STEM Manager
kristine-bullock@uiowa.edu |
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