STEM Public Awareness

Measuring STEM awareness

The Iowa STEM effort is all about improving student interest and achievement, as well as helping connect those passions to STEM careers in Iowa, in partnership with higher education, PreK-12 schools, business and industry, nonprofits, governmental agencies and more.

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Five ways Iowa’s STEM Scale-Up Program works

Drop in to just about any school across Iowa this week and somebody’s bringing a world-class STEM experience to students through the five-year-old STEM Scale-Up Program initiative of the Governor’s STEM Advisory Council.

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Local workplaces seeking STEM teacher expertise

If you are a teacher, you have probably wondered how your mathematics or science topics are used behind the walls of the manufacturing plant across town, or what kinds of roof-beam geometry and cement wall chemistry the construction crew uses to build that bridge up north or those new lofts downtown.

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Cindy Dietz, Rockwell Collins

MVP for Iowa STEM: Cindy Dietz and Rockwell Collins

With the help of January’s MVP for Iowa STEM, Rockwell Collins, an aerospace engineering company in Cedar Rapids, Cindy Dietz, its director of external relations, has used her expertise to send Iowa STEM soaring to new heights.

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Highland Elementary students coding in Waterloo

Iowa STEM amped up on Java and other computer science tools

Generation Z is type-cast as technology native—born with iPads in their cribs, raised with smartphones clutched in their grip, educated on digital global blackboards and bathed in WiFi waves connecting their cars, TVs and toasters. They’re accomplished consumers of technology. But how many could design an app, troubleshoot a software bug or critique the pros and cons of crowdsourcing?

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FRC Team in West Delaware County Community School District

Putting STEM first in the FIRST Robotics Competition

You might think it takes an Einstein-like mind to build a robot from scratch—or at least some years studying the craft. Yet, a program offered on the 2016-17 STEM Scale-Up Program menu is making it common for high school students to be the new, young minds behind these innovations. It’s called, “FIRST Robotics Competition (FRC).”

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Grant Wood Elementary School receives Code Iowa Technology Award

Thousands learn to program through Code Iowa

The room is eerily quiet. Students’ eyes are glued to their computers, geared up with headphones and a mouse to take on the challenge. Suddenly, a young girl’s hands go up in the air as she yells, “Yes! I did it!”

That’s the “Hour of Code.”

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Steve Triplett

MVP for Iowa STEM: Steve Triplett

Of 32 U.S. states where more than half of their graduates take the ACT, Iowa has the highest percentage of students meeting the STEM benchmark.

This great data point to help Iowa monitor student STEM interest would not exist if not for a great partnership with December’s MVP for Iowa STEM Steve Triplett.

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Future student at John Deere plant in Des Moines

Iowa D.N.R. and U.S. D.o.L. invest in Iowa STEM

Two Iowa STEM programs just got a major boost thanks to grants totaling $250,000. The STEM Council’s premiere professional development experience for STEM teachers – six-week summer externships – has earned a major vote of confidence from the Iowa Department of Natural Resources (DNR) in the form of more than $50,000 from their Resource Enhancement And Protection (REAP) grant competition.

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Making STEM Connections at Milford Memorial Library

“Making STEM Connections” in and out of classrooms

STEM learning often takes place beyond school classrooms. Other outstanding venues where kids learn STEM include museums, camping trips with their scout troop, at the zoo or on a 4-H outing and certainly among the book stacks at libraries.

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