Print
Email
Print Edition Stories
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
Mass. trade groups team up on STEM program; DIGITS targets 6th graders
By Rodney H. Brown
Breaking down the MIT $100K
MHT managing editor Rodney Brown on NECN: 22 tech companies give back to community
Flash Slideshow: Mass High Tech All-Stars Thought Leadership Roundtable
Six of the region’s major industry organizations banded together to reveal today their new program to help boost education in science technology engineering and math (STEM) subjects — a school outreach program called DIGITS.
According to Joyce Plotkin, president emerita of the Massachusetts Technology Leadership Council Inc. and chair of the six-organization group called the STEMTech Alliance, DIGITS will put a volunteer industry professional in each sixth grade in every one of the Bay State’s 568 schools that include that grade.
After being announced today at the Massachusetts STEM Summit in Sturbridge, the DIGITS program will get its official kick-off on Oct. 26, when Lt. Gov. Timothy Murray visits the Roosevelt school in Worcester.
One of the driving forces behind the need for such a program, Plotkin said, was the fact that despite Massachusetts students’ nation-leading test scores in math, the state ranks below the national average in SAT test takers reporting an interest in a career in a STEM field. After more than two years of studying the issue, it was determined that seventh grade was too late to reach out to students to make them aware of the possibilities for them if they do well in STEM subjects.
Using material designed on a pro bono basis by the firm Arnold Worldwide, DIGITS is designed to show children what sort of careers are available to them if they study STEM subjects. The volunteers, or “STEM ambassadors” as the alliance calls them, will tell the students about the jobs they do and the industry they work in and how their education helped lead them there.
“When we asked sixth graders, ‘What job do you know where you use math?’ do you know what 98 percent of the kids said? Math teachers,” Plotkin said.
The STEMTech Alliance received grant money from the Department of Higher Education’s STEM Pipeline Fund to perform the studies that determined that sixth grade was the best place to start and to develop the curriculum. The alliance is made up of the Massachusetts Technology Leadership Council; the Massachusetts Biotechnology Education Foundation, affiliated with the Massachusetts Biotechnology Council; the Massachusetts Network Communications Council; The Engineering Center; the Massachusetts Medical Device Industry Council; and the New England Clean Energy Council.
The DIGITS program was beta tested over the summer at 10 schools around the state, reaching 400 students, and after the program, all of the students who were evaluated afterward expressed a greater interest in STEM fields, Plotkin said.
Over the course of this current school year, DIGITS program volunteers will visit schools by region, according to the following schedule: November, Central Massachusetts; December, North Shore; January and February, Greater Boston; March, Southeastern Massachusetts and Cape Cod; and April, Pioneer Valley and the Berkshires.
More information, including a DIGITS music video, can be found at www.digits.us.com.
RSS Feeds
Comments
Please Login/Register to post comments.
No comments have been added or approved.