B STEM P F P C STEM o W - PREP-KC · section of the playbook shares the story of Grandview C-4 Public Schools. Grandview worked with PREP-KC, Honeywell, and other partners to build

Building STEM PiPelines For girls: A Community PlAyBook For CreAting And exPAnding STEM oPPortunities For young Women

Building stem PiPelines For girls: A Community PlAyBook For

CreAting And exPAnding stem oPPortunities For young Women

Contributors:

Douglas Elmer, Ph.D, Vice President, PREP-KC - Lead Researcher and Author

Susan Wally, President, PREP-KC, Editor

Yantézia Patrick, Data and Evaluation Associate, PREP-KC, Designer

Danielle Binion, Career Academies Coordinator, PREP-KC

Beth McCarthy, College and Career Program Coordinator, PREP-KC

Andra Culp, Executive Assistant, PREP-KC

Dr. Kenny Rodrequez, Superintendent, Grandview C-4 School District

Alyssa Zimmerman, Manufacturing Product Lead, Honeywell

Grant Lewis, Sr. Specialist Engineering Technician, Honeywell

Chayanne Sandoval-Williams, Senior, Grandview High School

Clark Vance, Teacher, Grandview High School

Don Wheeler, Teacher, Grandview High School

This research was made possible by the generous support of the Women’s Foundation of Greater Kansas City

Building stem PiPelines For girls 4

introduCtion

In communities across the United States, jobs in Science, Technology, Engineer-ing, & Mathematics (STEM) industries are among the highest paying and fastest growing careers for our young people. According to the US Department of Labor, 93 of the 100 top STEM occupations had above-average wages, and STEM careers are among the fastest growing fields in the country. These trends are mirrored in local labor data as well. According to a study by the Mid-America Regional Council (Economic & Workforce Update for the Kansas City Metro, fall 2013), the largest gaps between available job openings and qualified workers are in health care and computer/math careers and the industries with the highest projected job growth include architecture/engineering (25%), computers (20%), and life sciences (16%).

Despite this ongoing demand for gradu-ates who are prepared for careers in STEM fields, data shows that a significant gender gap persists in STEM fields. According to the Girls Scouts of America’s 2012 Genera-tion STEM report, women account for about only 20% of the bachelor’s degrees in engi-

neering, computer science, and physics. In addition, significant gender gaps exist within the STEM workforce. While female students account for nearly 60% of college graduates, they represent only 35% of college graduates earning STEM degrees (National Center for

Educational Statistics). In fields such as engineer-ing, less than 20% of college

graduates are female. African American and Hispanic girls have less exposure to STEM careers, less adult support for pursuing STEM fields, and greater awareness of gender barri-ers in STEM professions than their Caucasian peers (Generation STEM: What girls say about Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math). These disparities continue into the workforce, where women are vastly under-represented in STEM careers, despite making up about half of the workforce. Possible contributing fac-tors include a lack of female role models and gender stereotyping regarding expectations for girls to enroll in advanced math and sci-ence courses (Women in STEM: A gender gap to innovation, August 2011).

“in Fields suCh As

engineering, less thAn 20% oF College grAduAtes Are FemAle.”


To provide young women with bright futures in STEM fields, communities must bring together champions from their K-12, higher education, and industry sectors to work with students and their parents to create a pipeline of female STEM professionals. These pipelines are developed over many years and combine signature events and activities with ongoing STEM education and relationship building to prepare girls for STEM career pathways.Communities that successfully focus on de-veloping STEM talent pipelines for girls also develop and refine education and workforce development policies that complement ongo-ing education initiatives.

Sustained efforts to increase and improve on-ramps for young women into the STEM workforce has many benefits for both indi-viduals and the community. STEM careers are among the highest paid, most stable, and fastest growing in our country. The Society for Human Resource Management noted that the highest starting salaries for graduates earning bachelor’s degrees in 2017 were among the STEM majors. Regions that cultivate a pipe-line of diverse, talented STEM employees are more successful in attracting new business and creating jobs. In their report, The Hidden STEM Economy, The Brookings Institution noted that more STEM-oriented metropolitan economies perform strongly on a wide variety of economic indicators, from innovation to employment. Job growth, employment rates, patenting, wages, and exports are all higher in more STEM-based economies.

PREP-KC is a 501c3 nonprofit organization founded in Kansas City in 2006. PREP-KC focuses on creating opportunities for urban students throughout the bi-state Kansas City

region to succeed in college and careers. In 2017, PREP-KC worked with 6 school districts and 3 charter organizations on both sides of the Kansas-Missouri state line. Togeth-er, these districts and charter organizations serve nearly 65,000 students. 77 percent of students in our network identify as students of color, and 82 percent come from lower-in-come circumstances and qualify for free or reduced lunch.

PREP-KC organizes its work around three strategies that create a K-12 continuum of support focused on students’ postsecondary success. First, PREP-KC’s Math and Literacy Benchmarking Initiatives provide K-12 math-ematics teachers and K-3 literacy teachers with the training and resources needed to ensure every student becomes a successful math student and a proficient reader. Second, PREP-KC believes that “you can’t be it if you can’t see it.” This mantra guides our College and Career Experiences, which provide stu-dents with opportunities to explore the re-gion’s high-demand careers and the postsec-ondary degrees needed to compete for these jobs. Finally, PREP-KC’s Career Academies prepare high school students for college and the workforce. Students work on “real world” projects, interact with industry professionals, and earn college credit and industry-rec-ognized certifications as part of their high school experience.

PREP-KC’s theory of action focuses on creat-ing a multi-sector system of support for stu-dents throughout the K-16 education system and into the workforce. PREP-KC believes that by combining education, industry, and community supports throughout the school-to-career pipeline, and by concentrating these supports in districts that serve predominately students of color and low-income students,

About PREP-KC


we can significantly improve the educational and economic outcomes for these students while also creating a diverse, well-prepared regional workforce.

With the support of the Women’s Founda-tion, PREP-KC has developed this playbook to provide school districts and communities across Missouri and Kansas with a guide to help develop a comprehensive, multi-sector approach to creating, expanding, or refining pipelines for young women to enter STEM career pathways. The PREP-KC teamdesigned this playbook to blend research, best practices, a case study from our own port-folio, and tools that can be reproduced and customized for communities across Kansas and Missouri.

PREP-KC has broken the playbook into the following sections:

Making Connections and Surveying the Landscape: This section provides recom-mendations on developing a comprehensive understanding of the current state of STEM employment and opportunities for girls in your region, including connecting champi-ons for girls in STEM from across the vari-ous sectors of your community. This section provides guidelines and resources for creating powerful cross-section coalitions focused on increasing opportunities for girls interested in STEM careers, and for gaining a deep under-standing of the STEM needs across your local workforce. Drawing the Blueprint for Your STEM Pipeline: Once your community has created your coalition, you will need to design your action plan for connecting girls with STEM careers. This section provides tem-

plates based on evidence and best practices that also allow each region to customize their plan based on local context. In-School Practices that Support STEM Opportunities for Girls: This section summarizes key recommendations for im-plementing strategies that encourage girls to take the coursework and engage in oppor-tunities that prepare them for a future in a STEM-focused career.

Designing and Delivering Student Activities: An important component of comprehensive pipeline plans is “Signature Events” that bring STEM careers to life in a variety of ways for girls and young women in your region. PREP-KC provides an overview and planning tools to host one type of signa-ture event—IGNITE Days—in your commu-nity. This section also provides suggestions for other signature events you can design and offer for the girls in your area.

Putting it All Together: A Case Study in Building a STEM Pipeline for Girls: This section of the playbook shares the story of Grandview C-4 Public Schools. Grandview worked with PREP-KC, Honeywell, and other partners to build a robust pipeline to guide girls into the STEM professions.

Preparing for STEM Events Toolkit: This final section of the playbook includes a variety of organizers and tools you can repli-cate and customize to support your commu-nity’s STEM pipeline for girls.

PREP-KC is pleased to share lessons our team has learned throughout this playbook, and are also excited to continue learning from schools, colleges, employers, and other com-munity members across Missouri and Kansas.

About This Playbook


mAking ConneCtions And surveying the lAndsCAPe

STEM workforce development initiatives are most successful when they are closely aligned with the local and regional con-text for which they are preparing young people. While almost every labor market will have numerous opportunities for girls to pursue STEM careers, these opportunities can vary widely from one locale to another. For example, a community with significant growth within the bioscience and agricultural science communities will design very differ-ent career exploration and preparation activ-ities than a community where STEM oppor-tunities are largely focused in the computer science fields. These specific details around the needs of your local STEM workforce will

play a key role in shaping your community’s blueprint to attract girls into STEM workforce pipelines. Given the importance of shaping your plan to fit your specific labor market,

a careful analysis of the STEM employment landscape is a key first step in the process of designing any STEM-focused initiative.

Gaining a deep understanding of the STEM needs across your local workforce also re-quires you to develop strong connections across the key sectors of your business, edu-cation, and civic landscape. STEM workforce development pipelines operate in the inter-section of K-12, higher education, business, and government initiatives, and input from all these stakeholders will help provide a com-prehensive understanding of your communi-ty’s needs. This cross-sector analysis will be the first step towards recruiting champions who are committed to developing a pipeline for girls into the STEM workforce.

For any community seeking to build aSTEM pipeline for girls into STEM careers, it is important to have an up-to-date, evi-dence-based understanding of where STEM employment opportunities exist in your area. Pipeline organizers should consider the fol-lowing sources when collecting and organiz-ing data around STEM opportunities in their region:

stem WorkForCe develoPment initiAtives Are most suCCessFul When they Are Closely Aligned With the loCAl And regionAl Context For WhiCh they Are PrePAring young PeoPle.


Bureau of Labor Statistics (available at https://www.bls.gov/regions/moun-tain-plains/home.htm): This information compiled by the US Department of Labor pro-vides continuously updated information on job openings over the past year. Both Kansas and Missouri are represented by the Bureau’s Mountain—Plains office. Reviewing the job opening data in these databases can provide insight on the current need in your region.

State Departments of Labor and Economic Development Agencies: These agencies will often have information on the statewide workforce landscape and may also provide key data for smaller communities located outside of metropolitan areas. In some cases, state agencies will also provide sector-specific analysis of labor needs. Economic Development Councils and/or Chamber of Commerce: Many com-munities benefit from the work of Economic Development Councils (EDCs) and Chambers of Commerce. These organizations frequently collect data on current and future workforce needs and categorizes these needs by indus-try. When pipeline builders incorporate EDC and similar data into their analysis, they also

build relationships with regional organiza-tions that are likely to support STEM work-force development efforts.

Key employers in your area: Em-ployers are a terrific source of data on their STEM hiring needs, and can provide detailed information on the skill sets and experiences that make prospective employees the candi-dates best suited for these openings. These company-specific differences in skill sets and requirements can have a significant impact on STEM programming. For example, two firms may both hire computer programmers, but one firm may prefer programmers with proficiency in Java while the other prefers programmers that understand Python pro-gramming language—which would be critical information when planning coding activities for girls. Reaching out to employers for infor-mation on their hiring needs can be a critical first step towards recruiting businesses as participants in developing a STEM pipeline for girls. However, organizers should ana-lyze publicly available data before engaging employer. This helps you to develop some context of broader workforce needs as well as avoid making redundant data requests of companies. Postsecondary institutions: In ad-dition to collecting labor force data, it is also critical for pipeline initiatives to collect infor-mation on the STEM degrees offered by the higher education institutions in their region. Collecting and analyzing this postsecondary data alongside labor force data will highlight gaps between workforce needs and certifi-cation and credentialing programs in their communities.

PREP-KC has identified several best practices when analyzing labor force data:

Survey the Landscape


Triangulate data across multiple sourc-es to determine the areas of highest need in your local workforce.

Whenever possible, obtain information on skills and requirement associated with high-demand positions.

Seek out sources that have some infor-mation on anticipated workforce needs. This data is particularly valuable since girls partic-ipating in pipeline programs will not enter the workforce for several years.

Consider the geographic area that your employers might pull from and that your young people might consider for employ-ment. For many communities, blending data from multiple communities or metropolitan areas can provide a better sense of where STEM hiring needs are likely to grow in the future.

A graphic organizer designed to help pipeline organizers compile and analyze labor force data is included in the Toolkit section of this playbook. Organizing the data and answer-ing these questions will prove valuable when recruiting partners to help reverse engineer a STEM pipeline that prepares girls for these regional opportunities.

Successful STEM pipeline initiatives thrive when champions from a variety of stakehold-er groups come together around the common purpose of increasing opportunities for girls to embark on STEM careers. Champions from the following key sectors are included in most successful STEM pipeline initiatives:

K-12 School Districts: K-12 School Districts: School districts have tremendous opportunities to develop and implement STEM pipeline programming that begins when girls first enter kindergarten and grow with students over the years. K-12 districts can also develop policies and systems that amplify and reinforce collective initiatives close gender gaps in STEM. Nearly every successful STEM pipeline initiative includes one or more school districts as key members of their coalitions. Many pipeline initiatives span multiple K-12 districts, and a recom-mended best practice is to consider building a STEM pipeline that includes all K-12 districts that prepare students for your regional work-force. This minimizes duplication of efforts for industry, higher education, and civic part-ners, who all consider the entire region rather than a single school district when crafting their workforce development strategies. Industry & Professional Organiza-tions: After students, businesses and orga-nizations with STEM hiring needs are the biggest beneficiaries of a regional pipeline of well-prepared prospective female employees. By bring business and industry to the table, communities can tailor pipeline program-ming to the needs of employers and gain access to critical industry-specific expertise as you begin to design opportunities for stu-dents.

Higher Education Institutions: For most STEM careers, girls will need to com-plete additional training or education after high school. This makes higher education partners a critical group to bring to the table in a successful pipeline initiative. Higher Ed-ucation institutions not only provide critical programming and expertise to STEM pipeline initiatives but are also able to better align and

Recruit diverse champions of a STEM pipeline for girls


coordinate opportunities between both K-12 and workforce opportunities. Communities should make sure to include 4-year, 2-year, and tech-nical institutions that offer STEM education when inviting part-ners to the table.

Civic & Govern-mental Or-ganizations: Civic and governmental organizations play import-ant roles in cross-sector pipe-line initiatives. These organizations can help raise public awareness about the need for STEM pipelines and make connections with new advocates for girls who pursue STEM careers across a variety of sectors in the community.

Out of School Time Providers: Out of School Time providers include libraries, after school and summer programs, and other third-party organizations that focus on serv-ing youth. These organizations have both programming and community partnerships that focus on STEM exploration and skill development and can help align their pro-gramming with regional goals around STEM pipelines. Philanthropy: Local philanthropic organizations often have investment strat-

egies that align with the key goals of STEM pipeline initiatives. In addition to providing

funding to pipeline initiatives, philan-thropic organizations have de-

veloped significant networks across the communities

they serve and can recruit new advocates

for STEM pipeline projects from these networks.

Student & Families: Success-ful STEM pipeline not only provides

opportunities for girls, they also en-

gage girls and their families in the design

and development of their community’s STEM pipe-

line. PREP-KC recommends creating space for students and

families to lend their voice to pipeline development from the outset of the project.

To recruit and activate a diverse group of stakeholders, cross-sector projects ben-efit from the leadership of an interme-diary organization that coordinates the work among the partners. In some cases, the intermediary may be an established organization like PREP-KC that functions as a regional intermediary as part of its core mission. In other cases, a school district or key employer may play the role of intermediary. Other models rely on a third-party intermediary that

The following graphic, modified for customizationin the Toolkit, illustrates which stakeholders are part

of successful STEM pipeline coalitions.

0106

07

05

0304

02Intermediary

Students and Families

Industry and Professional Organizations

K-12 School Districts

Higher Education Institutions

Philanthropy

Out of School Time Providers

Civic and Government Organizations

The Power of an Intermediary


solely facilitates work across the coa-lition members, but does not provide STEM programming to students.

When deliberating what organization might play the role of intermediary, it is helpful to consider the key roles these organizations play, including:

Recruitment and Coalition Building: Intermediary organizations will play a lead role in recruiting indi-vidual and organizational champions to their coalition. This recruitment will include forging new connections across sectors.

Establishing Common Goals and Procedures: Once the intermediary or-ganization has recruited their coalition, the focus will shift to helping develop and articulate shared goals, strategies, and processes that keep partners orga-nized and focused

Organizing the Work: Intermedi-ary organizations will also lead the orga-nization of work groups and the devel-opment of action plans and timelines for key activities.

Monitoring Progress: Intermedi-ary organizations will collect data and report progress on the agreed upon goals and outcomes of the group and identify opportunities for next steps and continu-ous improvement.

It may also be helpful to consider the capacity and resources available to an organization when considering them as an intermediary. First, the intermediary

organization should have the capacity to commit an adequate amount of staff time to serving in the intermediary role. Intermediary tasks include calendar coordination and meeting organization, work plan management, preparing for and following up on events, and orga-nizing communication among coalition members. In addition to having the staff time to commit to these tasks, prospec-tive intermediary should also have the organizational capacity to manage this complex work effectively. Finally, if staff members leading intermediary work are also going to be involved in direct pro-gramming for the STEM pipeline, they must be able to remain objective and be able to separate their intermediary du-ties from their programming duties from time to time.


drAWing the BluePrint

For your stem PiPelineOnce your community has organized a coalition to work on building a STEM pipeline for girls, it’s time to get to work!

After coalitions have agreed upon an overarching goal for their pipeline, they can develop a framework that organizes the various types of STEM opportunities and supports into catego-ries that align with the goal. These categories might include Career Exposure and Awareness, Connecting with Mentors, Hands-On Experiences, and Academic Preparation. An abbreviat-ed example of a STEM pipeline framework is included below, and templates for communities to create their own STEM pipeline frameworks are included in the Toolkit. After these key areas are agreed upon, the group can begin mapping current assets and identifying needs for additional resources aligned with STEM pipeline goals across the K-12 continuum.

Once a framework has been established, the coalition can survey the resources available with-in the community and organize them across the framework. This process has two benefits. First, it organizes the existing STEM assets across a community in a single “clearinghouse” that helps everyone understand the full array of resources available to girls. Organizing assets across the STEM pipeline framework also allows the coalition to identify any gaps in program-ming that may become a focal point for organizations to individually or collectively develop new programming and experiences for girls.

Establish a Framework for the Pipeline

Asset MappingWhat supports currently exist for K-12 students?*

*Include the opportunity and the provider

Domain Early Childhood

K-3 4-6 7-8 9-12

Career Exposure and Awareness

Hands-On Experiences

Connection with Mentors

Academic Appreciation

Asset Mapping and Gap Analysis


Key Questions to Establish A STEM Framework

What STEM careers/pathways are in greatest need in your region?

What are your key goals for increasing the workforce pipeline?

How will Common Sector Competencies be integrated into K-12 opportunities?

In some cases, there may be a total gap in a domain. For example, some communities may not have any opportunities for students to learn about the local STEM landscape. In other cases, activities in a domain may only be offered for a specific age group. In our example, resources that connect girls with mentors are available only for high school age students. Finally, there may be capacity gaps where opportunities exist, but space is too limit to guarantee access to every girls who might be interested in participating.

Some communities may choose to do multi-ple asset maps and gap analyses for the var-ious STEM disciplines reflected in their re-gional labor force. While this approach takes more time, it is often important to uncover differences in opportunities between the life sciences, computer sciences, other technolo-gies, and mathematics opportunities.

It is also important to cast a wide net when creating asset maps. Coalition members are likely to be well represented on the asset map, but the group should also make sure to reach out to other organizations providing STEM resources. This provides a comprehensive picture of where all STEM assets for girls exist and helps communities make better use of ex-isting resources. All organizations, regardless

of whether or not they are formal members of the pipeline coalition, should have the oppor-tunity to engage in the asset mapping process so that they understand where their individ-ual organization’s STEM work fits in within the broader ecosystem. Additionally, all STEM organizations included in the asset mapping process should be given access to the com-pleted asset map. This inclusive, transparent approach helps engage new champions for the pipeline work and helps individual organi-zations understand their role in the commu-nity-wide initiative.

One final consideration that coalitions should think through when developing their asset map is how to include or “count” resources that are exclusively focused on girls versus universal STEM activities. For example, some local communities may want to count only mentoring opportunities that connect girls with female mentors but decide to include any resource focused on ACT preparation regardless of whether or not it has a gender-specific focus.

Another advantage to develop a community asset map that organizes STEM resources for girls is the ability to connect the dots across sectors of the community. In most cases, no single partner or provider can provide all aspects of programming girls need access to receive the most robust guidance towards a STEM career. Therefore, communities need to blend resources from across the K-12, Higher Education, Industry, and Civic and Nonprofit sections into an integrated, multi-year series of activities, opportunities, and experiences that deepen girls exposure to, interest in, and

An Ecosystem Approach to STEM Readiness


preparation for STEM careers. These blends of activities will include set pieces that are offered to all girls with options for girls that are based on individual’s interest. For exam-ple, all girls in a community may have access to the same STEM curriculum within their school district but may choose to pursue a variety of after-school clubs and out of school time opportunities that complement their interests and future plans.

More than any other partner in a STEM pipeline coalition, K-12 schools can influ-ence girls’ understanding of and prepara-tion for careers in STEM. In robust STEM pipeline systems for girls, out of school time programming and off-site experience serve to amplify and complement a rigorous and dynamic STEM experience for girls during the school day. School districts have a number of strategies available to them when considering how to increase exposure and preparation for STEM careers for all students as well as take key steps to ensure that girls take advantage of the unique STEM opportunities available to them. This section of the playbook focuses on some promising strategies that PREP-KC has helped our partner districts implement inside

in-sChool PoliCies And PrACtiCes thAt

suPPort stem PiPelines For girls

of the classroom to help guide girls towards postsecondary STEM opportunities.

A 2018 report by Microsoft noted that “Girls don’t initially see the potential for careers in STEM to be creative or have a positive impact on the world. But even a little exposure to real-world applications of STEM knowledge dramatically changes their outlook.” PREP-KC believes that this exploration and expo-sure revolves around connecting classroom learning with real-world applications of that learning in ways that also incorporate creativ-ity and service to others. Exposure to real-world STEM applications often occur in out-of-school time settings (as discussed in the next session), but can also play a powerful role in teaching and learning on a daily basis. Teachers who offer students the opportunity to engage in projects that blend STEM learning with students’ creativity and industry- and society-based projects and problems help bring these real-world con-nections and applications to life for girls in

Exploration & Exposure Activities That Connect STEM Classrooms to Real-World Learning


their classroom. Increasingly, industry part-ners play a role in the classroom by offering to advise and provide feedback on student projects. Recently, PREP-KC launched The

Connector, a virtual plat-form to help educators in Missouri and Kansas connect with industry profession-als across

the world. The Connector platform allows industry partners to link up with classrooms through a simple video equipment included in most laptops and PCs. More information is available at http://prepkc.nepris.com.

School districts that make a conscious effort to recruit girls into rigorous STEM curricula and provide support to help them excel in these courses have seen significant increases in the number of girls graduating from high school ready for STEM opportunities. Schools take a variety of approaches in these outreach efforts. For some schools, such as Grandview C-4 School District in Grandview, Missouri, single-gender STEM courses have signifi-cantly increased girls’ enrollment in rigorous, STEM coursework such as Project, Lead the Way Engineering and Bioscience classes. Other schools have found that female faculty members who serve as mentors and advisors to girls interested in STEM opportunities have helped persuade their students to commit to more challenging STEM coursework. Anoth-er successful approach has been to connect girls with female STEM professionals when

discussing course selection and other critical decisions in middle school and high school that help reinforce progress towards working a STEM-focused field. All these strategies require school districts and schools to make deliberate decisions around how courses are scheduled, staff members are assigned, and students are advised that reflect a conscious effort to increase the representation of girls in districts’ most rigorous STEM offerings.

Regardless of the specific approach taken by school districts seeking to provide their girls with the best possible opportunities for STEM careers, this collection of strategies is tied together by several key tenets. First, districts make purposeful policy, strategy, and programming decisions to encourage girls towards STEM learning across the K-12 con-tinuum. Second, schools often see the need to go beyond just curriculum and instruction when seeking to close gender gaps in STEM disciplines and address the challenge through school structure and design considerations.

A 2018 rePort By

miCrosoFt noted thAt “girls don’t initiAlly see the PotentiAl For CAreers in stem to Be CreAtive or hAve A Positive imPACt on the World.”

Deliberate Efforts to Enroll Girls in Rigorous STEM Curricula


designing And

delivering student ACtivities

While K-12 school systems are considering ways to bolster STEM pipelines for girls through daily teaching and learning, com-munities should work together to start designing activities and experiences that will help fill gaps in an ecosystem’s STEM offerings for girls. It is likely that many of these new experiences will be closely tied to career exploration. Most students need guid-ance with career planning and identifying their individual strengths and interests and how these relate to different fields. PREP-KC’s experience indicates that low-income and first-generation college students often lack access to the information and experi-ences that prepare them for postsecondary and career success. From hands-on college and career experiences, students gain aware-ness of the postsecondary options beyond high school diploma attainment and begin to assess their best-fit options. Communities benefit from these experiences in a variety of ways. For example:

When students are more focused on their futures, then overall academic outcomes are improved and achieved for the school building and district.

When students have clear career goals and understand the associated educational requirements, teachers find it easier to moti-vate students to tackle rigorous coursework.

When students engage in these op-portunities at scale, the overall culture and climate of a school building becomes more focused on postsecondary success.

Unlike more traditional college-preparation programs, PREP-KC supports a broad view of postsecondary education that includes mili-tary service, apprenticeship, technical trade training, and degree-seeking programs. Fur-thermore, PREP-KC’s student experiences are unique because they are opportunities for all students and not just a select few who would otherwise not be exposed to high-impact, life-changing opportunities.

In this section, PREP-KC provides a brief overview of the activities and experiences we have developed that align well with building STEM pipelines for girls. These events are broadly categorized as IGNITE Events, Career Jumping, College Visits, Industry-Informed Instruction, Workplace Tours, and the College


Enrollment Initiative. Optimally, a student will participate in IGNITE in the 7th or 8th grade, Career Jumping in either 8th or 9th grade, a Workplace Tour during 10th grade, a College Visit, and additional Workplace Tour during 11th grade, and the College Enroll-ment Initiative in 12th grade. This continu-um may not be right for each school, so each school is encouraged to identify what set of experiences align with their goals.

IGNITE Events are centered on the benefits of hands-on learning, especially when introducing new concepts to students. With the capacity to engage a large group of mid-dle school students, PREP-KC partners with local employers to offer a variety of engaging, hands-on learning stations at IGNITE events. From their participation, students gain new-found awareness of careers in the Kansas City region. Events can be customized to focus on specific trades and industries, such as engineering, health, technology, bioscience, and design. In many cases, schools host gen-der-specific IGNITE events, and make sure to feature a number of female STEM profes-sionals leading the student activities. Hosted in the school building, typically for an entire grade level, PREP-KC facilitates the business partnership and volunteer recruitment for IGNITE events.

Career Jumping is a career exploration activity to help students learn about a vari-ety of careers within a brief amount of time. Modeled after speed-dating events, small groups (sometimes gender-specific groups) of students have 6-8-minute-long conversa-tions with professionals. Typically, students within an entire grade level will participate

Event Descriptions

in this event. Based on the total number of students in the grade, PREP-KC recruits 20-60 volunteers to talk with students about their personal education and career backgrounds. Guiding conversation questions are provided by PREP-KC, and students are encouraged to think about additional questions to take full advantage of the opportunity to network with a local professional who is volunteering their time and expertise. From participation, stu-dents will begin to think about which careers most interest them.

College Visits are college development interventions for students to increase their knowledge about postsecondary options. Instead of focusing on promoting individual higher education institutions, PREP-KC ap-proaches the visits as experiential learning opportunities for students to become familiar with the college culture, the variety of course offerings, and the requirements for admission and financial aid. College visits can be tai-lored toward specific learning communities, career academies, or academic programs. PREP-KC staff members are responsible for establishing the expectations and detailed agendas with the local and regional postsec-ondary partners.


Workplace Tours are opportunities for students to engage with companies and professionals in industries of interest to them. PREP-KC can assist with suggesting relevant tours for girls according to their career path-way interests. During the worksite visit, stu-dents will participate in a tour, meet profes-sionals, and participate in a hands-on activity to further their understanding of the related career skills.

The College Enrollment Initiative achieves three necessary steps for students to finalize their postsecondary plans: identi-fying the types of postsecondary institutions, applying for admission, and applying for financial aid. College Fairs coordinated by PREP-KC are specifically designed for 11th-grade students to learn about the different types of postsecondary institutions and pro-grams (both vocational and academic). For 12th grade students, the College Application Fair and Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) Completion Event comprise the next two steps of the college-planning process. With this series of events, PREP-KC establishes partnerships with colleges and universities that are sensitive to the financial backgrounds of students from urban schools, thereby, often offering application waivers to participating students. Events are hosted at the school building and/or the district’s cen-tral office and allow for the attendance of an entire grade level.

While various organizations will play key roles in all these events for girls, no partner is more important in the design of student activities than the school. As the planning is described in this section, PREP-KC wants to make clear that the school’s role is to be ac-

tive collaborators with STEM pipeline part-ners, and to be leading voices in discussions around identifying needs for girls and design-ing new opportunities to fill gaps in a commu-nity’s asset maps.

Many school districts and intermediaries, including PREP-KC and our partner districts, find it useful to develop a memorandum of understanding (MOU) that outlines the expectations that partners are committing to related to a specific set of student activities and experiences. MOUs can include agree-ments around program design, partner respon-sibilities, data col-lection, budgets, and any other organizational aspects of the project that will benefit from having all partners state their formalized commitment to specific details.

While vArious orgAnizAtions Will PlAy key roles in All these events For girls, no PArtner is more imPortAnt in the design oF student ACtivities thAn the sChool.

The Activity Design Process


When designing or refining new opportuni-ties, PREP-KC and our partners find it help-ful to focus on an ongoing cycle of design and improvement. The initial cycle of design begins by taking data from the asset map and gap analysis and beginning to create new opportunities and activities for girls. During this plan-ning and design phase, project details will be sketched out, and an action plan will be developed that assigns champions and a clear timeline leading up through the conclusion of the event. All this plan-ning and prepa-ration leads up to implementing activities for students. Depending on the activi-ty, implementation can take a few minutes or an entire day or more. Once an activity is completed, partners en-gage in key follow-up tasks that ensure that individual events and activities have maxi-mum benefits for girls and that the appropri-ate data and information about the student activity is collected. This allows coalitions to engage in assessment, evaluation, and itera-tion by looking at the impact that events had to broader STEM exploration and readiness goals for girls who participated. This phase of the process also focuses on gaining insights from the data collected to improve the design of the activity and generate ideas for other

STEM experiences for girls.

While the school will often work with the intermediary or a lead partner for a specific project, many of the experiences built into a STEM pipeline will require recruiting volun-

teers from across multiple stakehold-er groups. Volunteers provide

expertise, time, and other resources to both the

planning and delivery of STEM activities for

girls. Therefore, it is key for an in-termediary to be able to recruit a broad network of volunteers. For example, PREP-KC has a network of nearly

900 volunteers from over 200

organizations that we help connect to a

variety of experiences that benefit students and

teachers. We should note that you don’t need to have an extensive

volunteer database to start planning STEM exploration activities. STEM events and ac-tivities are a terrific way to recruit volunteers and give them a concrete way to help students while giving just a few hours of their time. PREP-KC started our volunteer database with fewer than 20 professionals and grew our net-work over time by reaching out to businesses and other organizations with opportunities to participate in events like the ones described in this section of the playbook.

Plan and

Design

01Implement

Activities for

Students

Follow-Up

Tasks

Assessment,

Evaluation, &

Iteration

02

0304


Because most activities planned by your co-alition will be used many times for different groups of girls, activity organizers will want to make sure to engage the partners who plan and deliver an activity to debrief and evaluate each event. This process should include dia-logue around the event design, preparation, and implementation as well as an analysis of the data collected for each activity and event. In addition to evaluating each individual event on its own merits, it is also important to consider how the events assisted achieving the broader goals of the pipeline initiative and what insights from this specific activity may have implications for other activities and components of the pipeline.

Debriefing and evaluation conversations should include all partners who participated in the event, including the school or organi-zation offering the program to students, the adults designing and delivering content, and feedback from other adults included in the process. Student (and where relevant, fami-ly) feedback collected during or immediately after the event also provides a critical per-spective in these debriefing sessions. De-briefing participants should adopt a continu-ous improvement framework when assessing activities, with an eye for what could be made

more efficient or impactful the next time an activity is offered. Debriefings should also be transparent and well documented, and an “open source” approach to improving activi-ty designs should be incorporated so that all partners are able to learn from one another and work together to improve STEM activities as they are replicated and iterated by different partners across the STEM pipeline coalition.

Assessing , Evaluating & Iterating

Building stem PiPelines For

students at Grandview High School. These courses provided Grandview students the op-portunity to learn engineering skills and com-plete authentic projects in a STEM-focused elective that complemented their academic coursework. To recruit and prepare students for the Project Lead the Way courses, Grand-view also began offering a middle school engineering camp during the summer of 2007. While the district was pleased with the rigor of this new STEM programming, they were concerned about gender gap among the stu-dents who were enrolling for the engineering program.

“Our audience was going to be students of all different races and we had to just strate-gically do it because if I don’t see myself repre-sented at the table, I feel like I’m not able to do it. And so we made sure that wherever we were going, we made sure we had a right crowd. If we’re doing a Girls IGNITE event, we make sure female professionals are at the event to help pull girls in. Our employees see the reward for those girls down the line and see the value in the IGNITE events, and the op-portunity to volunteer sells itself.”— Grant Lewis, Honeywell

Grandview C-4 School District is located just outside of Kansas City, Missouri. Grandview is a growing, diverse district of nearly 4,300 students that has made a public commit-ment to helping all their students success-fully prepare for college, career, and life. Like the broader Kansas City metropolitan area, Grandview has a concentration of high-pay-ing STEM careers in fast-growing fields. To fully prepare students for postsecondary suc-cess, the district needed a strategy to prepare students for these STEM careers—and they knew to be successful, they weren’t going to need partners from across the community to help students in their preparation both inside and outside the classroom. For more than a decade, Grandview C-4 Schools has invest-ed in building a robust STEM pipeline—and made sure that girls are well represented in this pipeline.

The first steps that Grandview took towards building a strong STEM pipeline focused on ramping up STEM offerings during the school day. In 2006, Grandview launched their Proj-ect Lead the Way Engineering courses for


Putting it All together: grAndiveW, missouri’s groWing

stem PiPleine For girls

Case Study


PREP-KC knew that Grandview and Honey-well both had a shared interest in closing gen-der gaps in STEM and helped the two teams plan to begin offering GirlsIGNITE events for Grandview students. This new partnership between Grandview and Honeywell made perfect sense given the relocation of the Hon-eywell-managed Kansas City National Secu-rity Campus to a new location within Grand-view’s district boundaries. Soon, Grandview, Honeywell, and PREP-KC were connecting girls with STEM professionals from across the company.

Grandview’s superintendent, Dr. Kenny Ro-drequez, believed that along with working with Honeywell to ramp up the district’s to recruit girls into the Engineering program, they also had to create op-portunities for girls to excel within the Engineering classrooms. Dr. Rodrequez had seen first-hand the power of STEM programming that focused on provid-ing girls with the opportunities and supports needed to excel in STEM classrooms. Dr. Rodrequez noted “In 2008, I had the opportu-nity to work at a school with an engineering focus. The program was run by a woman who was a former NASA engineer, and she noted that “boys just tend to take over the class” of 7th-graders. Dr. Rodrequez helped establish a girls engineering class for this program, and he saw the idea to employ this strategy again when he came to Grandview. “This is a successful, research-based approach to helping girls focus on STEM. Scheduling the class was a challenge—scheduling is always a challenge—but we worked through it.” In 2015, Grandview was able to launch its first

girls-only engineering classes.

With Girls IGNITE events in place and a ded-icated Introduction to Engineering Design Class for girls in place, Grandview began to see an increase in the number of girls enroll-ing in the high school’s Engineering program. The number of girls increased from 3 to over 20, and students had more significant interest in Engineering. As one Engineering teacher noted “It used to be that in order to fill the [Engineering] sections, they would put in any ninth grade student into the course. We had lots of people in the ninth grade classes who had no interest whatsoever in the subject, didn’t ask to be put in the class and yet the counselors feel obliged to fill this many class-es. What we’ve found after IGNITE is, we’re

still filling the classes but we’re now getting people who’ve actually chosen them.”

Girls have provid-ed positive feedback on the girls-only engi-neering classes. As one student, Chayanne Sandoval-Williams stated:

I didn’t realize how harmonious things were when it was just a bunch of girls working together. Granted for a while, we were all really shy but after a little bit, we were all very eager to answer and figure things out together and realize that for the most part, everybody there really enjoyed engineering. We had questions that we would never have thought we would have had before. It was definitely different. My computer science class was three girls, I want to say 17 boys or something like that. At first, I was very intimidated and I found solace in the other girls in my class. But being in this all-girls class, we all had no need to feel intimidated by each

“this is A suCCessFul, reseArCh-BAsed APProACh to helPing girls FoCus on stem. sCheduling the ClAss WAs A ChAllenge—sCheduling is Al-WAys A ChAllenge—But We Worked through it.” — dr. kenny rodrequez



other. We were all there, and we all understood that even though it was male-dominated, this is our class. This is our class.

Engineering teachers have also noted the benefits of the single-gender Intro to Engi-neering Design classes for their female stu-dents. The teachers noted that the students in the all-girls introductory course have higher grades and test scores than boys taking the same course with the same cur-riculum. One teacher went on to say, “Girls’ success seems to follow them because the second year when they’re mixed with the boys, they’re the ones who already know more and are more on the ball and so they naturally become the leaders [of the class].” The teach-er went on to give the following explanation of the benefit of single-gender Engineering courses: They’ve got a better background. When I get my senior kids—I just had three girls in here the last period—I told them ‘We’ve got figure out what to do with all these eight graders.’ The girls recalled IGNITE and said ‘Yeah, that’s why we wanted to do the Engineering classes. One of the students had no idea what she wanted to be as an adult until she took the freshman intro class. She said “After that, I knew Engineering is what I wanted to do. It’s really presented some-thing to female students that normally they don’t get exposed t and that has had, at least

in some small way, a real influence on some of them.

PREP-KC and other organizations have continued to work to connect Grandview

students and teachers with Honeywell and other industry and higher education partners throughout their Engineering coursework during high school. Through their partner-ship with PREP-KC, Grandview’s Engineering students are able to visit a variety of architec-ture, engineering, and construction compa-nies across the bi-state Kansas City region. In addition to worksite visits, Grandview’s engineering students are also able to expe-rience customized campus visits where they are able to learn more about colleges in the Kansas City area that are offering Engineering programs. Additionally, the Kansas City STEM Alliance has helped Grandview girls connect with female STEM professionals through their Mentor Makers program.

Because girls can form their “STEM identi-ty” as early as 3rd grade, Grandview has also made efforts to extend STEM exploration ac-tivities upstream into the elementary grades. The district has expanded their use of Project Lead the Way modules throughout the ele-mentary grades and launched FIRST Lego Leagues that give students in the elementary grades their first opportunities to participate in engaging in hands-on STEM programming

“But Being in this All-girls ClAss, We All hAd no need to Feel intimidAted By eACh other. We Were All there, And We All understood thAt even though it WAs mAle-dominAted, this is our ClAss. this is our ClAss.”— ChAyAnne sAndovAl-WilliAms



by building robots. Grandview continues to spotlight female STEM role models from their own community as they recruit younger girls into the STEM pipeline and motivate them to pursue STEM-focused courses of study in middle and high school. In the summer of 2018, four female STEM teachers from Grand-view will attend Space Academy at the US Space and Rocket Center in Huntsville, Ala-bama. The Space Academy opportunity was developed through a partnership between Honeywell and PREP-KC. Additionally, girls from the district (and former participants in Girls Ignite events) like Chayanne San-doval-Williams are playing a leading role in outreach activities to younger girls.

The Grandview School District and their partners also continue to replicate the lessons learned from their Engineering program into other STEM disciplines offered in the district. The school has made efforts to connect girls interested in Computer Science, Bioscience, and other STEM fields with professional men-tors, provide them with extracurricular activ-ities, and actively recruit them into academic and elective coursework focused on STEM fields. They also hope to work with PREP-KC to connect additional STEM professionals in more core academic classrooms beyond the Project Lead the Way courses, and to expand opportunities for students to pursue intern-ships, opportunities to take college course-work in STEM fields.

Given her positive experiences in Grandview’s STEM programming focused on girls, we asked Chayanne what advice she would give to other communities seeking to support girls in pursuing STEM interests. She responded:

The first thing I would do—this is advice to a school district and advice to the girls who

may not be sure if they want to do this-- take a risk…Take that risk, and in doing that, be willing to make a mistake. Not everything’s going to be perfect. Sometimes when you take a risk there’s a chance that you might fall. Just get back up. Dust yourself off. It’s going to be okay.

And then the last piece I would offer is…pro-vide continuous support. I’ve actually read a quote on the wall at one of my classes and it says something along the lines of, ‘A worker lives for work, but they also live for the ac-complishments and accolades behind the work they do.’ It’s been very different watching our team back in freshman year where we were not sure how to reach out for the sup-port that the school district had for us. Now, they are constantly pushing us along, giv-ing us the recognition that we weren’t sure we had in their eyes. Let these teams, these girls, these opportunity makers know that what they’re doing is progressing something, especially when things start to get a little bit messy. You may lose a match. You may make a big mistake, but so many stones are already being laid in this path for people 10 or 20 years down the line.



Chayanne Sandoval-Williams has always been interested in computers, but never considered a career in Computer Science until a middle school teacher gave her a book on coding. “He gave me this HTML book. I remember taking it home be-fore winter break and then spending all of winter break making my first webpage.”

Chayanne recalled several different opportunities to get her interested in a future in STEM fields. She participated in girls-only IGNITE events, recalling “I remember having a lot of fun with the Little Bits connectors, and thinking ‘This is really cool, I want this!’ I remember the Civil Engineering exercise—and I failed at that, really hard!” Shortly after the IGNITE event, her teacher gave her the HTML book and Chayanne noted “that was when [my perception] made a little bit of a shift and a change,” and led to her enrolling in Computer Science coursework for her ninth grade year.

Chayanne had also met the school’s robotics team as an 8th grade, but remembered think-ing “Oh gosh, I don’t think I could ever really do anything like this.” When the team asked her if she wanted to join them when she started high school, Chayanne was too intimated to sign up. Luckily, Chayanne’s Computer Science teacher in 9th grade said to her “You know, you’re a really good programmer. I don’t know why you haven’t

joined the robotics team yet.” Chayanne went from being too intimidated to join the team to creating the code that ran the team’s robot by the end of ninth grade. As a junior, Chayanne was a finalist for FIRST Robotics’ Dean’s List Award and had the chance to the FIRST World Champion-ships in Houston, Texas in April 2018.

In addition to the opportunities afforded to her by her school, Chayanne also pointed to her con-nections with STEM mentors as a key driver of her growing confidence in her own STEM com-petency. In addition to her Computer Science teacher who encouraged her to join the robotics team, Chayanne emphasized the encouragement she received from her family when thinking about what fueled her passion for STEM activities. She also noted that the industry mentors she’s con-nected with “have all had different backgrounds, but all have that same fundamental push of, you should go try something if you like it. Don’t be afraid to fail. A mistake is okay, because it’s just a mistake. I’ve had some amazing mentors.”

Having the opportunity to work with other girls has also helped Chayanne build up her confi-dence in STEM fields. She thrived in her girls-on-ly Introduction to Engineering class, and gave her the confidence to tackle more difficult Engineer-ing courses. “I found this confidence in knowing that I was just as much as an engineer as any other person taking that class. Once we went on to the second classroom as a mixed class, again, it was the same thing,” Cheyanne noted. “They all are engineers just like I am. We have every right to work as hard as them, to do as good as the guys, to be as good as each other, and to all work together. So that definitely was very nice.”

Chayanne is entering her senior year at Grand-view. She is hoping to dual major in Computer Science and Electrical Engineering. She was a winner of the National Center for Women in Technology—Western Missouri & Kansas Affili-ate Aspirations in Computing Award, and also a National Honorable Mention.


Photo credit: KC STEM Alliance

student sPotlight: ChAyAnne sAndovAl-WilliAms,

senior, grAndvieW high sChool


In-school college and career experiences require the most volunteer participation. For this reason, they are often scheduled months in advance. It is necessary for the school to designate one to two people--teachers are highly suggested—who are responsible for partnering with the intermediary or lead partner on the planning details. In general, schools should be prepared for the following tasks when preparing for these experiences:

Confirm the date with school adminis-trators and the school calendar to ensure no conflicting events.

Developing a contingency plan for un-expected events like snow days.

Reserve the room for the event and order necessary tables and chairs.

Submit the work order for room set-up and consider audio/visual needs.

Identify the teachers to attend the full event and assess substitute needs. Convene a meeting with the teachers at least one month

prior to the event and invite PREP-KC to par-ticipate.

Discuss teachers’ roles during the event, such as being helpful with monitoring student behavior. Teachers are encouraged to gather curriculum ideas from the event as well.

Identify potential accommodations that might be needed for students to fully par-ticipate.

Determine how student participation will be tracked and reported to PREP-KC using their provided template or something comparable. PREP-KC recommends that the school establish a system between the regis-trar and family advocacy teachers.

Schedule time, in advance, for both pre-paring students for the experience and later debriefing their learning and application of knowledge. PREP-KC offers some recommen-dations (see Appendices E and F).

Create student groups for participation according to gender and/or class schedules.

PrePAring For stem events toolkitIn School Experiences


Determine if students will complete a hard or soft copy of the PREP-KC evaluation and what materials (i.e. pencil, laptop) are necessary. Purchase water and snacks for volun-teers by the day of the event.

For out-of-school college and career experi-ences, the intermediary takes the lead on co-ordinating agendas and logistical details with the business or postsecondary partner. The major differences for the school partner when comparing out-of-school with in-school expe-riences are: the attainment of parent/guard-ian permission, scheduling transportation, and the possible advance need for student attendance lists. Because most of the College Visits and Workplace Tours are customized to students’ interests, the intermediary will often need to share the list of students well in advance to the day of the event. Furthermore, some of the business partners have security precautions requiring the advance receipt of visiting guests. It is advised for schools to survey students’ career interests. This will enable the school to better match students with career-specific experiences. In general, schools should be prepared for the following tasks when preparing for these experiences:

Propose dates for potential visits to the intermediary.

Confirm the date with school adminis-trators and the school calendar to ensure no conflicting events.

Identify the students to be invited per experience and oversee the sign-up and permission process. Monitor this process to

ensure that at least 90% of available student spots will be filled by the day of the event.

Some suggested tips are to: Review student information to match events with students’ interests and to audit which students have not yet attended an event.

Set a deadline for collection of permis-sion slips at least one week prior.

Create a “robo call” to families for noti-fication of the permission slips. Have a contingency plan for filling available student spots.

In the case that the school must cancel a scheduled experience, PREP-KC recom-mends for the decision to be made 10 busi-ness days prior to the scheduled date and communicated by the principal.)

Identify potential accommodations that might be needed for students to fully par-ticipate.

Determine how student participation will be tracked and reported to the intermedi-ary and/or business partner. Assess the required time of the event and students’ schedules. If lunch is not in-cluded with the event, then consider the lunch schedule. Also, notify the students’ teachers to be absent from class.

Schedule time for preparing students for the experience and debriefing their learn-ing and application of knowledge. Inform the intermediary and/or busi-

Offsite Experiences


ness partner of the teacher(s) to attend as chaperone(s) and provide phone and email contact information. Assess substitute needs. Prepare teachers for their chaperone roles, such as being actively engaged, maintaining attendance information, managing student behavior, and reducing risks. Determine if students will complete a hard or soft copy of the PREP-KC evaluation and what materials (i.e. pencil, laptop) are necessary.

Submit the order for bus transportation and obtain telephone number of bus driver for the day of the event.

Provide the intermediary/business partner with the name and cell phone num-ber of at least one teacher on the bus.

After each event, despite if in-school or out-of-school, there are three critical tasks for schools to complete, which are:

Ensure that 100% of participating students complete an evaluation providing their learning from, and feedback on, the experience. The Toolkit of this playbook in-cludes the 5-question evaluation as an online or paper evaluation tool. For in-school experi-ences, a teacher or other staff member should schedule time for evaluations to be complet-ed by students. Ideally, the partner respon-sible for data collection should receive the evaluations from the school within the same day, and week at the latest. For out-of- school experiences, plan on incorporating time into the event for students and other participants to complete before the end of the experience

Follow-Up Tasks

and directly collects them from students. Assign a champion to review the student re-sponses, both to summarize trends and high-light quotes and information that conveys the value of the activity to students and others. This information should be organized into a summary of students’ feedback to business and postsecondary partners, so they can have an awareness of the value of the experience they provided. This information also helps all partners refine and improve activity design for future events.

Report the list of students that attend-ed the event to the intermediary or partner assigned to data collection. Because most STEM pipelines track metrics related to the number of girls who benefit from STEM activ-ities, participant tracking is a critical piece of program evaluation. Usually, this job is as-signed to the teacher or school staff member serving as the lead for a specific activity.

Debrief the experience with students to encourage them to reflect on the learning and how to apply the learning to their aca-demic and career goals. In our experience, it is best if the debrief occurs within a week of the event. Math, Science, Career Explora-tion, or Advisory classes can all provide good opportunities to debrief these experiences. PREP-KC has included a suggested outline for a debriefing conversation in the Toolkit.


Job Number of Jobs Salary/Wage Information

Data Source

Employer Industry Number of Employees

Key Positions/Skill Sets Needed

Institution Key STEM Majors/Programs

Type of Degree Of-fered

Connections with Local Employers?

STEM Landscape Organizers

Analysis of Labor Force

Largest STEM Employers in Our Community

Institutions Offering STEM Degrees in Our Community


Building Your STEM Coalition

01

06

07

0503

04

02Intermediary

Students and Families

Industry and Professional Organizations

K-12 School Districts

Higher Education Institutions

Philanthropy

Out of School Time Providers

Civic and Government

Organizations


Pre-Reflection LessonGOAL: To adequately prepare students for the experience so they are aware of the expecta-tions and purpose. For an experiential learning activity, such as the ones coordinated by PREP-KC, students will be asked to be active agents of their own learning. Their participation will highly influence what they gain from the experience.

OBJECTIVES: To prepare students for the idea of experiential learning, essentially learning by doing, by engaging them in different learning strategies. To orient students to the specific experience they will attend and its related topics or themes. To connect the specific experience to students’ academic, college, or career goals, to build investment in the opportunity.

PREPARATION: The teacher will want to have prior knowledge about the upcoming expe-rience. The teacher can consult with the PREP-KC liaison, conduct research, or contact the hosting organization/business. Teacher will need the agenda and other information about the experience from the PREP-KC liaison.

TIME REQUIRED: 45 Minutes

EQUIPMENT/MATERIALS: Selection based on choice of learning and dialogue strategies. Permission slip or other (optional) handout with details for the student to keep.

Time Allotment What

10 min. Utilize an activating strategy related to the topic of the planned experience. Some ideas are found in the Groups at Work book, such as: Go to Your Corners, Group Résumé, Think & Write/Pair & Share.

20 min. Select an engaging activity for students to reflect on and/or discuss related topics.Consider articles about current events, websites, and videos related to the topics of the planned experience.

10 min. Utilize a summarizing or synthesizing strategy, such as a T-chart of What I Knowand Want to Know. Create a vocabulary word bank to pre-expose students to helpful vocabulary related to the experience.

5 min. • Describe the specifically-planned experience. Decide the level of detail to share with students according to the agendas provided by PREP-KC.• Review the school’s participation guidelines or code of conduct.• Give reminders for what students need to know between now and the day ofthe experience (i.e. What do they need to bring? What is the deadline to submit permission slips? What is the appropriate attire?)


Post-Reflection LessonGOAL: To guide students through reflective learning in order to truly gleam the benefits of the experience.

OBJECTIVES: To encourage students to discuss their thoughts and feelings about the experience. To assist students with making cognitive connections between the experience and their academic learning. To encourage continuous learning by connecting the specific experience to students’ academic, college, or career goals.

PREPARATION: The teacher will largely rely on their observations as they chaperoned the experience. The teacher might also review the students’ feedback collected from the PREP-KC evaluation.

TIME REQUIRED: 45 Minutes

EQUIPMENT/MATERIALS: Selection based on choice of learning and dialogue strategies. Information about other scheduled experiences from PREP-KC.

Time Allotment What

10 min. Utilize an activating strategy related to the experience. Some ideas are found in the Groups at Work book, such as One Word Summary. Each student contributes a synthesizing word reflecting on what was important to them from the experience. It can be a fact or emotion. Organize a sharing process for students to share their words in pairs and/or small groups. Remind students that this is not time for agreeing or disagreeing with others’ words.

5 min. Check if students have questions remaining from the experience. Address any that you can.

25 min. Select an engaging activity for students to reflect on what they learned from the experience and how they can apply the information. From the Groups at Work book, consider the Swap Meet activity for students to exchange specific examples or applications. Direct students to write their response to a sentence prompt on an index card. Then students circulate around the room, sharing their response and exchanging cards with a peer. After two or three exchanges, direct students to return to a table or desk and share their current card. In small groups, students identify themes and patterns to report out. Possible sentence prompts are:• One thing I intend to try…• One thing I want to be sure to remember…• One thing I want to know more about…

5 min. End on a celebratory note, such as sharing pictures or quotes from the experience. If none available, select a related quote, poem, etc. Remind students of future experiences throughout the school year that are available for them to attend.


STEM Event Evaluation Template for Students

Name: _________________________________

Think about what you have learned from this experience in three perspectives.

Summarize: Put into your own words the ideas you thought were most significant.React: Reflect on how you feel about these ideas and why. Write about it.Apply: Consider how you might make use of this information and incorporate new ideas into your existing beliefs and practices.

1. Summarize three most important things you learned today: ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

2. Give your reaction to what you learned today: ___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

3. As a result of this experience, give examples of how you will apply this information to your school work? : ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

4. What did you like best about this experience and what recommendations do you have to improve the event in the future? : ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

5. Did this event make you interested in a career or an industry? If so, which one(s)?: ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

6. What are you going to do next based on what you learned today?: ___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________


Ignite Activity GuideDeveloped by Honeywell FM&T Staff

Architecture/CivilOverview: Architecture and Civil engineers plan, design and maintain structures, such as buildings, roads, bridges and dams, that meet human needs. Engineers often test a structure’s strength until it fails and then try to figure out why the failure happened. The weight that the structure supports is called its load. In order for a structure to be stable, the load must be balanced. If a structure is changed in some way, the load may need to be rebalanced to maintain stability.

Activity: Tumbling Tower

Materials: 28 blue toilet paper tubes 6 squares of cardboard

Description: The students will be working in teams to remove as many tubes from the tower as possible while still keeping the tower standing. The lowest number of tubes achievable is 5.

Directions: 1. Use 14 tubes and 3 cardboard squares to build the tower shown below. You will need to make 2 towers for your station.

2. Following the rules below, the students take turns removing one tube at a time from the tower without letting the three cardboard platforms fall. You may use both of your hands. You may only touch the cardboard platforms when removing of moving a tube. You may change the position of the remaining tubes. You cannot remove the tubes on the top of the structure

3. Questions for the students: What steps did you take to keep the tower from tumbling? Why did the tower eventually fall?


Careers: Design a building that can survive a major earthquake, build a dam to provide a source of hydro-electric power, design a bridge that is beautiful to look at and is safe for the people that travel on it, design water-treatment facilities to reduce water pollution, design and draw blueprints for a family’s dream home, create modern skyscrapers, etc.

MechanicalOverview: Mechanical engineers design, build and test machines, engines and other mechanical devices. For this project, we will be building foil boats. Once each group has built their boat, we will be placing pennies on the boat to see how many it can hold before it sinks.

Activity: Foil Boats

Materials: Foil Pennies Bucket with water Paper towels

Description: The students will be making foil boats to float on the water that can withstand weight being added.

Directions: 1. Split the students into groups of 2. Give each group a square of foil.

2. Instruct them to create a boat that will be able to withstand weight being placed on it. Give them 4-5 min-utes to build their boat.

3. Once the boats are built, place one penny at a time on the boat until it sinks. Do this for all groups to de-termine whose boat was the best design based on how many pennies it can hold.

4. If time allows, let them redesign their boats. To save resources, try to have them use the same piece of foil again.

5. Have the students help you clean up by retrieving the pennies and their boats.

6. Discussion Questions: What could you have done differently to make your boat hold more weight? Why did some boats float while others sunk?

Careers: Design a safety harness for an upside-down amusement park ride, model the bending and twisting displayed by solar panels on a space telescope, design surgical robots that improve precision, design carbon fiber prosthetic blades for runners, etc.

ChemicalOverview: Chemical engineers design equipment and processes for large-scale chemical manufacturing, plan and test methods of manufacturing products and supervise productions. They also work with a variety of in-dustries other than chemical such as industries that produce energy, electronics, food, pet food, clothing and paper. Today we will be creating a chemical reaction when we mix corn starch and water to create Oobleck.


Activity: Oobleck

Materials: Corn Starch Water Bowls Spoons Paper towels

Description: The students will learn about how a Non-Neutonian fluid works by creating oobleck in groups.

Directions: 1. Split the students into 2 groups. Give each group a bowl and spoon.

2. Explain to the students that they will be creating a Non-Neutonian fluid (shear thickening fluid) by mixing corn starch and water using a ratio of 2:1.

3. Fill 2 dixie cups full of corn starch and place in each groups bowl. Add one dixie cup of water to their bowl. If the mixture isn’t quite right, add water one spoonful at a time.

4. Have the students mix the corn starch and water together. The oobleck should be hard when they stir and liquid/runny when no one is putting pressure on it. Make sure all of the students get a chance to hold it.

5. Discussion Questions: What happens when you apply pressure? (Acts like a solid) What happens when the oobleck relaxes? (Acts like a liquid) Can you name examples of other Non-Neutonian fluids? (Paint, ketchup)

Careers: Find a way to turn recycled plastic bottles into high-end fabrics, create substances that chance col-ors at different temperatures, develop new fuels to propel spacecrafts, invent bubble gum formula that makes it easy to blow big bubbles, etc.

ElectricalOverview: Electrical engineers design, develop, test and supervise the manufacturing of electrical and elec-tronics equipment. This includes electric motors, machinery controls, automobiles, aircrafts, cell phones and many other applications.

Activity: Little Bits

Materials: Little Bits case Little Bits instruction cards Description: The students will build various circuits based on the Little Bits Challenge cards.

Directions: 1. Utilize the solution manual to guide the students when they are building the circuits (the solution manual will be provided the day of the event).


2. After introducing the students to electrical engineering, demonstrate at least the first challenge card cir-cuit. If needed, demonstrate several more as well and gage the students understanding.

3. Let the students work in two teams to complete as many of the challenges as possible.

Careers: Develop construction plans for a skyscraper’s electrical lighting system, design a remote-controlled toy race car, devise a reliable radio collar so that researchers can track wild animals, design the electrical sys-tem for a factory robot that can weld a car, etc.

EnvironmentalOverview: Environmental engineers use engineering principles to improve the natural environment, provide healthy air, water and land, and clean up disasters that might occur by human means into the environment. Environmental and mining engineers try to extract the largest amount of mineral resources using the least amount of money but providing the greatest amount of safety. They also strive to cause as little damage to the environment as possible.

Activity: Mining for Chocolate

Materials: Hard cookies Soft cookies Pencils Paper towels Toothpicks Paperclips Plastic Spoons

Description: The students will be designing a process for mining chocolate chips out of a cookie to get the most chocolate chips while causing the least amount of damage.

Directions: 1. Split the students into two groups. Once separated, you will split them again into smaller teams (will need to end up with 4 teams).

2. Holding up one hard and one soft cookie, inform the students that each cookie represents different types of land with a limited supply of a valuable resource—chocolate chips. The goal is to extract as many chocolate chips as possible while causing the least amount of damage to the land.

3. Have students briefly discuss how they will proceed with the mining process taking into consideration which tools would be best for each type of land.

4. Have the students guess how many whole chocolate chips they will be able to extract from each cookie.

5. Once the estimate has been given, allow the students 7 minutes to remove as many chocolate chips as possible using the mining tools (toothpick, paper clips, plastic spoon).

6. Add up how many whole chocolate chips and how many partial chocolate chips were collected from each group.


7. If time allows, calculate the value of the chocolate chips found (whole chocolate chip: $1000, chocolate chip pieces: $100/each).

8. Discussion questions: Which land was easier to mine? Which tool was easiest to use? What types of environmental repairs might be needed for the cookies? Will these repairs have costs that affect the overall value of your mining finds?


Works Cited

Beede, D. N., Julian, T. A., Langdon, D., McKittrick, G., Khan, B., & Doms, M. E. (2011). Women in STEM: A gender gap to innovation.

Microsoft Philanthropies. Closing the STEM Gap: Why STEM classes and careers still lack girls and what we can do about it. (2018). Retrieved April 05, 2018 from https://query.prod.cms.rt.microsoft.com/cms/api/am/binary/RE1UMWz.

Mid-America Regional Council. Education and Workforce Data for the Kansas City Metro. Fall 2014

Miller, S. (2018, April 11). Starting Salaries for 2017 College Grads Hit All-Time High. Society for Human Resource Management. Retrieved fromhttps://www.shrm.org/resourcesandtools/hr-topics/compensation/pag-es/2017-college-grads-salaries.aspx

Modi, K., Schoenberg, J., & Salmond, K. (2012). Generation STEM: What girls say about science, technology, engineering, and math. A Report from the Girl Scout Research Institute. New York, NY: Girl Scouts of the USA.

Musu-Gillette, L., Robinson, J., McFarland, J., KewalRamani, A., Zhang, A., & Wilkinson-Flicker, S. (2016). Status and Trends in the Education of Racial and Ethnic Groups 2016. NCES 2016-007. National Center for Education Statistics.

Rothwell, J. (2013). The hidden STEM economy. Metropolitan Policy Program at Brookings.

United States Department of Labor Bureau of Labor Statistics. (2017). Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics Occupations Past, Present, and Future. Retrieved April 05, 2018, from https://www.bls.gov/spotlight/2017/sci-ence-technology-engineering-and-mathematics-stem-occupations-past-pres-ent-and-future/pdf/science-technology-engineering-and-mathemat-ics-stem-occupations-past-present-and-future.pdf.


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