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Jessica Roy, senior programmer/analyst, Medical Information Technology

In-class program boosts ‘STEM’ awareness through volunteer corps

By Rodney H. Brown, Mass High Tech Staff

In the latest organized effort to boost the level of student participation in science, technology, engineering and math in the Bay State, it ultimately comes down to—as do most things—the people involved. In the case of the newly launched DIGITS program developed by the STEMTech Alliance, a consortium of tech industry groups, that means volunteers from member companies.

When her manager approached her about volunteering for the DIGITS pilot program last summer, Jessica Roy, a senior programmer/analyst for Westwood-based Medical Information Technology Inc., thought it would be interesting.

“My manager called me out of the blue one day and said, ‘So how are you with working with sixth-graders?’” Roy said.

DIGITS is designed to show children what sort of careers are available to them if they study STEM subjects. The volunteers tell the students about the jobs they do and the industry they work in, and how their education helped lead them there.

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 is working to place a volunteer industry professional in every 6th grade class among the Bay State’s 568 schools that include that grade.

But first the alliance needed to test its own material. On one day in early June, Roy visited a sixth grade class at the Talbot Middle School in Fall River, after being coached on the DIGITS material and how to use it.

“There was telephone training where they explained the material and sort of explained what they were looking for over the phone, but one of the things I liked about it is that you could customize it—take the material and make it your own,” Roy said.

Despite some apprehension about trying to hold the attention of a class of sixth graders just weeks before school let out for the summer, Roy plunged into the material and was pleased at how well the students responded to the stickers, posters and game-like exercises.

“One thing that did surprise me was that they were able to connect this with people they knew who were in the technology industry,” Roy said.

The DIGITS program got its official kickoff on Oct. 26, when Lt. Gov. Timothy Murray visited the Roosevelt School in Worcester. Murray had been involved in promoting STEM education since Gov. Deval Patrick took office, and he had been having talks with Plotkin throughout the course of the DIGITS development process, he said.

“The reason we had that interest and wanted to make sure we had this conversation is that it is so important that we are building on a day-to-day basis in our young people the awareness of the value that STEM careers offer,” Murray said.

During that first official use of the DIGITS material in the Worcester classroom, Murray said he could watch the lights go on in the students.

“You could see them beginning to better appreciate and understand that whether it is the videogame they are using or the cell phone they have, the ability for them to have it is based on the ability of someone to make it,” he said.