STEM BEST® Program model Ankeny Orbis spoke with school board members and administrators at the IASB Convention.

Growing STEM BEST ® Community Invites New Partners

The STEM BEST® Program continues to demonstrate momentum through growth and impact of the program in school districts across Iowa. Of 63 total STEM BEST® Program awards, there are a total of 58 models involving 83 school districts and more than 5,000 students that formed more than 1,300 workplace partnerships from 2014 to 2019.

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Match-meetings take place across Iowa this month to prepare for Iowa STEM Teacher Externships this summer.

Record-setting summer on the horizon for Teacher Externships

It started off with 10 Teacher Externs in 2009.

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Assumption High School students experiencing virtual reality made possible by the STEM Best award.

Iowa STEM BEST Partner brings STEM reality to the classroom

“It’s making learning real.”

This is how Wendy Martin, a science teacher at Assumption High School in Davenport, talks about how her school’s STEM BEST partnership with VictoryVR, a Quad Cities technology company, is changing the way students learn about STEM careers.

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FIRST Tech Challenge teams compete at FIRST Championship in St. Louis.

Iowa well-represented at international FIRST® Championship

The ultimate goal for some 52,000 teams participating in FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) across the globe from 86 countries is navigating the qualifying pathway to reach the FIRST Championship held in St. Louis last month.

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Photo of NGA core team

STEM Prominent in Scaling Work-Based Learning

Since late 2015, a core team of Iowans representing a broad spectrum of agencies has been working in concert with peers in five other states to scale work-based learning (WBL) in high-demand fields.

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