Southern Indiana Business Report
BLOOMINGTON — Regional Opportunity Initiatives is among 16 organizations and colleges awarded grants in the Indiana Commission for Higher Education’s STEM Teacher Recruitment Fund’s fifth round of funding to support programs that recruit, prepare, place and retain educators in underserved STEM classrooms and high-need school districts. ROI will utilize the $85,000 grant funding to enhance its STEM Fellows program in the Indiana Uplands region and expand it to include middle school educators.
“The Indiana Uplands is fortunate to have an abundance of career opportunities in STEM fields,” said ROI Vice President of Talent Development Michi McClaine. “But we know that early interventions in STEM learning are crucial to getting students interested and keeping them engaged in STEM through middle school and beyond. ROI is grateful to the Indiana Commission for Higher Education for this opportunity to grow and enhance the STEM Fellows program. Not only will it benefit educators, students, and school districts, the STEM Fellows program is creating a pipeline of competitive STEM talent that will enable our industry sectors and our region to prosper long into the future.”
STEM Fellows is a year-long professional development program designed to increase the confidence and competence of students and elementary teachers in science, technology, engineering and math. Fellows develop skills to become effective peer leaders within their schools, share learning with their colleagues, and encourage other teachers to integrate STEM into their curriculum. Working with ROI’s education team, Fellows participate in ongoing professional development activities addressing a wide range of content, including project-based learning, the engineering design process, making and makerspaces, computational thinking, microelectronics and more. Each professional development event is designed to leave educators with new learning and a better understanding of how to make connections to science, technology, engineering and math in the classroom.
ROI’s STEM Fellows program began in 2017 and, to date, has included five cohorts, for a total of 97 K-6 teachers working in 23 of the 27 school districts across the 11 counties of the Indiana Uplands region. The program was developed in response to ROI’s Occupational Needs Assessment findings, which emphasize the importance of having STEM-literate students to meet current and future workforce needs and provide a basis for continued economic growth and prosperity in the Uplands region. Throughout their fellowship, educators are encouraged to think deeper about STEM teaching and find ways to make meaningful connections between the content covered in class and future opportunities for their students. Fellows explore STEM content and topics related to the Uplands’ key industry sectors of defense, life sciences, and advanced manufacturing.
In fall 2022, ROI will expand the program to focus on middle school STEM. Participants will receive STEM training and professional development relevant to the Indiana STEM Praxis exams required for license endorsements in middle school science, computer science, or technology education. ROI has also partnered with the National Institute of STEM Education to provide middle school Fellows with access to the STEM Essentials micro-certifications, a framework for quality STEM pedagogy. NISE’s research-based system shows that students benefit from continual practice with STEM strategies and that these strategies must integrate and support required content standards in addition to building students’ readiness for 21st-century skills and STEM workforce demands.