CAST Featured in 2018 STEM for All Video Showcase
Date:
Monday, May 14, 2018
Nearly 5 million young people in the US, aged 16-24, are out of school and out of work. In our work, we refer to this group as opportunity youth—young people with enormous potential, but currently disconnected from education and the economy. Jobs in the STEM fields are rapidly increasing; by 2020 there will be over one million positions to be filled in the US. In collaboration with UMass Amherst and YouthBuild USA, an organization that works with directly with opportunity youth, we are creating a digital tool to support STEM career exploration and engagement.
The CEE-STEM project (Career Exploration and Readiness Environment for Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) will be featured this week in the National Science Foundation’s 2018 STEM for All Video Showcase. This week-long, virtual showcase creates an opportunity for NSF-funded research projects in various stages to discuss their work with fellow researchers as well as the public. A major theme of the showcase this year is broadening participation in STEM education and careers. The project team has conducted focus groups at several YouthBuild sites in New England to develop and refine a digital e-portfolio that YouthBuild students can collect and share evidence of the STEM skills mastered during their YouthBuild experience. CAST’s short video submission focuses on our unique co-design process with YouthBuild participants.
Ultimately, what we want to see is not the CEE-STEM tool living in the context of a research project, but living out in the world where a young person can take it to a prospective employer, or can take it to a college admissions officer and use it as a way to demonstrate how much they've built these STEM skills and how ready they are for these next steps.
Sam Johnston, CEE-STEM Co-Principal Investigator