SUNY/NYAS STEM Mentoring After School Program Statewide Scale Up Project, Year Three

The United States is facing a crisis: Not enough students are being trained in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) to support and foster economic growth. To increase exposure to, experience in, and knowledge of STEM in younger students, the State University of New York (SUNY) and the New York Academy of Sciences (NYAS) have partnered to deliver informal, after school STEM experiences to underserved middle school students. Now in year three, our program trains SUNY graduate students and post-doctoral fellows as mentors at six SUNY campuses throughout New York State. SUNY mentors learn pedagogy and content via streaming videos, on-campus instruction and a credit-bearing online course, and are placed as mentoring pairs in an informal afterschool setting. For Spring 2014, 25 classes were taught with 6 different curricula; 46 mentors and 371 students participated. Findings demonstrate that, as in years one and two, mentoring has multiple positive outcomes for the students and, just as strik...