News

50 Years of Meeting Students Where They Are at Metro High School

On May 30 METRO High School in Cedar Rapids celebrated its 50th Anniversary. To commemorate the day, a one-of-a-kind tree planting was a part of the celebration as METRO High School is the recipient of one of NASA's Artemis Moon Trees.

Educators at Waukee Innovative Learning Center

Iowa's First-Ever STEM Professional Development Palooza

They came from all four corners of the state, representing elementary, middle and high school as well as college and out-of-school learning. All shared a common curiosity: how to amplify STEM in their classrooms and communities.

Corporate Partners Crucial to Reaching More Young Iowans

The key to building a stronger STEM workforce is to connect what students learn in the classroom to the STEM careers just beyond school walls. With an "edu-nomic development" charge, Iowa STEM along with dozens of committed Corporate Partners bring work-based learning experiences and other opportunities to the students of Iowa.

STEM BEST: Fort Madison High School

"Our community partners were reinforcing the idea that students needed to learn in a way consistent with the current world of work," said Greg Smith, principal at Fort Madison High School. "They agreed with us that to be successful as adults, students needed to practice problem-solving in group settings.

Fast-Track Iowa's Future Conference is packed.

‘Fast-Track Iowa’s Future’ Conference a success

More than 550 community leaders from all sectors of Iowa assembled at the Events Center in Des Moines on June 21 to learn, develop and grow localized school-business partnerships with the goal of inspiring and preparing students for STEM careers.

M.A. Ford STEM Career Awareness billboard

Iowa businesses featured on STEM career billboards

A family’s summer road trip across Iowa may just inspire the next aerospace engineer, botanist, industrial machinist, chemist or other high-demand STEM career professional thanks to the help of some of Iowa STEM’s Corporate Partners.

DelCo BEST students talk with STEM BEST Partner

STEM BEST: DelCo BEST

STEM BEST® is a win-win-win. It creates projects for students to explore their passions. It opens doors for businesses to contribute to career awareness and shape the future workforce. It presents examples for teachers to connect content areas to the jobs outside school walls.

Educator tries virtual reality in Iowa STEM Teacher Externship

Externship helps STEM teacher tie real-world concepts to ‘virtual’ careers

Design Mill, Inc. in Dubuque provides an emergent line of work, creating virtual reality experiences of warehouses for industrial clients to use in real estate or for employee training purposes. Like most STEM careers in Iowa, new ones like this crop up almost every day.

Match-meetings take place across Iowa this month to prepare for Iowa STEM Teacher Externships this summer.

Record-setting summer on the horizon for Teacher Externships

It started off with 10 Teacher Externs in 2009.

Assumption High School students experiencing virtual reality made possible by the STEM Best award.

Iowa STEM BEST Partner brings STEM reality to the classroom

“It’s making learning real.”

This is how Wendy Martin, a science teacher at Assumption High School in Davenport, talks about how her school’s STEM BEST partnership with VictoryVR, a Quad Cities technology company, is changing the way students learn about STEM careers.

FIRST Tech Challenge teams compete at FIRST Championship in St. Louis.

Iowa well-represented at international FIRST® Championship

The ultimate goal for some 52,000 teams participating in FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) across the globe from 86 countries is navigating the qualifying pathway to reach the FIRST Championship held in St. Louis last month.