Developing New Partnerships in West Africa: LESSAT

On the 24th of June 2016 some InsightSTEM Campus Ambassadors along with the InsightSTEM West Africa Coordinator, West Africa Family, Community and KinderSTEM Director, and other InsightSTEM Local Impact Committee: Liberia Officials attended a networking dinner organized by our new partner Liberian Encouraging Student in Science and Technology (LESSAT).

The dinner was themed "Interactive Fundraising Dinner with Professionals". The funds raised will be used for projects LESSAT will undertake, in particular encouraging more Liberian women to pursue STEM careers.

During the dinner the InsightSTEM West Africa Coordinator, Mr. Simmie N. Nyanfor Jr., presented different STEM TED Talks to inspire young students to take up a career in STEM and also encourage those brave ones to stay in STEM fields. Also during the dinner we had our InsightSTEM Local Impact Committee: Liberia Chairman Mr. Chalaty A. Young tell the students sweet stories about InsightSTEM and all the good work that is coming up, he also extended an invitation for them to become Campus Ambassadors and join the LIC to make STEM exploration great in Liberia with their different ideas.

The dinner ended successfully with interactions among students and professionals. Many thanks to the organizers and our partner LESSAT for the planning.

You can support InsightSTEM's ongoing activities in West Africa at http://www.gofundme.com/InsightWestAfrica

-- Jatherlyn Manlay. Tellewoyan 
InsightSTEM LIC Liberia Logistics Officer

What STEM professionals could do in my classroom and for my classmates and teachers

A high school student's perspective...

In high school, many students groan about having to take STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) classes and wonder when trigonometry will ever be useful in life. Sometimes it can be hard for students to get excited about these classes because they are often taught in a bland, abstract way without any context to how they may ever be applicable in the “real” world. This is where STEM professionals could step in. STEM professionals would add context and excitement to my STEM classes. These professionals could educate students about how what they are learning is useful and how much more exciting and relevant their studies are to real problems and understanding the world than the words written in their textbooks. Providing us with ideas of the endless and unimaginable contexts and discoveries that can be made using tools and knowledge we are only beginning to learn. STEM professionals could accomplish this by giving us interactive and engaging presentations about their jobs, explaining their research or their role in their company. Giving us students examples of different types of STEM careers could potentially inspire us to follow in their footsteps. Additionally, by STEM professionals incorporating a demonstration into their presentations they could excite and engage more of us. Interactive presentations are important because they can leave a more lasting impression than a typical lecture which is key to holding students interest in STEM programs.

Unfortunately, as exciting as it would be to have STEM professionals in classrooms it is far from a reality. So far in high school I have had one STEM professional come into my class. He was one of my peers’ parents that volunteered to come in. I don’t know if the limited number of STEM professionals in classrooms is due to the setup of school curriculums or the availability of these professionals to teachers or both. Obviously changing the school curriculum could be a difficult change to initiate. However, if curriculums could be designed to accommodate having guest facilitators it would be beneficial to the students. In addition to a curriculum change, creating a place where teachers and STEM professionals could communicate to set up presentations or collaborations would be very valuable for the students. If STEM professionals were easily accessible to teachers I believe that my teachers would be extremely interested in working with them. It can be hard for teachers to find STEM professionals that are willing to come in, and often times they don’t know where to start looking. I think, having a place to easily contact or be contacted by STEM professionals would help solve this problem for a lot of my teachers.

Similarly a more in-depth collaboration between teachers and STEM professionals would increase the impact of the professional’s presence in the classroom. A collaboration could mean many things. For instance, the professional and teacher could together design an activity, project, or experiment for the class to do over a given amount of time. They could help the class set up and come back periodically to check in and review. The activity could be centered around the STEM professionals’ line of work and could involve the types of equipment that they use in their job on a daily basis. This would allow students to dip their toe in the water of what STEM jobs are like and help kindle their interest in STEM careers. Furthermore, if STEM professionals could offer opportunities outside of the classroom for interested students it could allow us students to gain experience in the field and assess if the particular career could be right for them.

Students like me would value these interactions and partnerships to add more richness, depth and interest to my class rooms. I hope that programs like InsightSTEM's High School Scholars program, Insightful Teachers program, and projects in the area of Expert-Instructor-Learner-Communicator partnerships will have great impacts in this area.

To join InsightSTEM's High School Scholars program visit here: http://bit.ly/HSSapp
To nominate (or self nominate) and Insightful Teacher visit here: http://bit.ly/ISITnom

Nina O'Brien is a High School Student at the Catalina Foothills High School in Tucson, AZ; Nina is participating with InsightSTEM through the High School Scholars program and has a summer internship with InsightSTEM to work on the development of World STEM Exploration Week.

Back to School 2016: Mapping our Campus Ambassador Impact

Right now we have Campus Ambassadors at Universities in 23 countries around the world, and the number is constantly growing. We keep track of the campuses where our ambassadors (and the supporters of the program) are having an impact around the world in an active google map that is embedded below in this blog post... or you can visit http://bit.ly/ISCAmap to explore some more!

To support our Campus Ambassadors around the world, and help us to have impacts with our new programs for the 2016-2017 school year you can visit http://bit.ly/CAgive2016.

Professional Development and Planning in West Africa

11 Days in Liberia from Jake Noel-Storr on Vimeo.

To support our ongoing work in West Africa please visit http://www.gofundme.com/InsightWestAfrica

In May, InsightSTEM's President and CEO Dr. Jacob Noel-Storr made a trip to West Africa in keeping with InsightSTEM's mission – to democratize STEM knowledge through exploration. Dr. Jake Noel-Storr's trip covered a planning and professional development training of over 150 students, teachers and young STEM professionals on a train-the-trainer mode to make meaningful impact in and across West Africa.

The benefits of doing so are that students and teachers experience real-world problems in exploring STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) fields and the ever-changing workforce, sparking and supporting interest in pursuing STEM careers. Creating these impacts earlier in students' educational careers will serve to encourage even more students to enter these fields.

West Africa -- a prime region for impacts on STEM education, students, young STEM professionals and teachers -- showed the enthusiasm and commitment that they are ready to change the paradigm of STEM education.

On day 1 of the planning and development week the InsightSTEM West Africa Coordinator Simmie S. Nyanfor and the Liberia Local Impact Committee chair Chalaty A. Young met Dr Jake, followed by the InsightSTEM Local Impact Committee Liberia leadership on planning how Insight STEM can make more impact across Liberia and West Africa after the planning and development week.



The Planning and Professional Development week continued on day 2 with an occasion for over 60 students from 20 different high schools: encouraging the students to do STEM and to introduce InsightSTEM’s premiere program for High School Students called the ‘High School Scholars Program’ which offers networking opportunities and professional development for High School students.

On the same day, Dr. Jake hosted the first training to enable West Africa students and Young STEM Professionals to work with teachers in promoting the understanding of STEM knowledge through exploration; followed by a meeting for all Campus Ambassadors for updates and to present their campus ambassador certificates. Campus Ambassadors are a global network of college undergraduates and graduate students interested or invested in the future of STEM knowledge. This is a global network of students who self-connect and motivate to promote the InsightSTEM Message -- and there is a cadre of over 70 Campus Ambassadors in Liberia already furthering their own STEM careers and the careers of others of all ages.



Day 3 of the Planning and Professional Development week focused on working with families and communities and working with STEM exploration technologies for West Africa through two workshops. The workshops will enable students and young STEM professionals to deliver STEM exploration programs to families and communities, to promote further pursuit of STEM, and to enable students and young STEM professionals to adapt and provide STEM Exploration Technologies that work in the social, economic and infrastructure environment of West Africa. The momentum and enthusiasm for making impact was increasing day by day.



Dr. Jake had a 3 hours long STEM exploration training workshop for our Insightful Teachers on day 4 of the Planning and Professional development week and, followed up with a partnership workshop for our first 5 Teacher-STEM partnership pairings!! The teachers hope InsightSTEM can expand further, and train more educators across Liberia and West Africa, and hopefully partner with the National Teacher's Association of Liberia to make learning through exploration a reality in Liberian classrooms! The Insightful Teachers are a global network of teachers who are enthusiastic to reimagine STEM education through exploration.



Day 5 of planning in Liberia was focused on developing our first set of family programs to be offered in West Africa with the focus on "Environmental Exposure"; from the physics of sound, to the chemistry of air quality, to the biology of germs and the spread of disease, to the earth science of natural environmental hazards. The programs will be trialled starting in August or September of 2016!



After this week of planning and training, InsightSTEM President Dr. Jake Noel-Storr and West Africa Coordinator Simmie S. Nyanfor, Jr. were hosted on a radio show called ‘Better Tomorrow’ to discussed the future of STEM education in Liberia on Voice FM. This show was highly interactive where in a lot of Liberians called to commemorate InsightSTEM for their excellent work in Liberia and how we could better make impact across the nation.

In the last few days in Liberia we focused on meetings with the Local Impact Committee teams including Networking, Technology and Communications teams to plan for ongoing impacts for 2016!
 

We wrapped up the Planning and Professional development with some final meetings with InsightSTEM Grant writing and Fundraising Team; Events and Logistics Team; and the appointment of InsightSTEM new "Families, Communities, and KinderSTEM Mission Director for West Africa", Johnnason L. David, Jr.

Dr Jake left behind a fantastic and enthusiastic crew with InsightSTEM West Africa Coordinator Simmie S. Nyanfor Jr., Liberia Local Impact Committee Chair, Chalaty A. Young, and all of InsightSTEM Local Impact Committee members, Campus Ambassadors, Insightful Teachers, Young STEM Professionals, and High School Scholars across West Africa!

For more information on InsightSTEM in West Africa please email africa@insightstem.com or like our FaceBook Page.

Back to School 2016: Our Campus Ambassadors Worldwide

Recently we presented the latest updates about our Campus Ambassadors program at the national meeting of the American Astronomical Society. You can check out the poster below or here!

We are launching our Back to School campaign to support our ongoing Campus Ambassadors program... where you can have great impacts in providing professional development and education/outreach training and opportunities to the next generation of STEM professionals worldwide! To learn about how to support this program please visit http://bit.ly/CAgive2016 ... and check back here for continuing updates and information soon!