RCN-UBE Incubator: The STEM Career Exploration Laboratory Network

全国STEM专业的学生往往无法将课程学习经历转化为职业抱负。课程内容往往缺乏与社会问题的联系，或者未能利用学生在专业中培养的技能来解决公共问题。STEM职业探索实验室网络(STEMCEL)旨在开发和实施“课程到社区和职业技能集”的方法，以加强学生的公民参与，并鼓励他们探索各种可以带来社会经济进步的STEM职业。该网络将通过让学生应用他们的课堂课程来制定社会和社会正义需求的解决方案，在社区问题和教育机构之间建立桥梁。一个例子是开发快速环境测试工具，帮助识别和监测受污染的当地场地。STEMCEL孵化器的总体目标是：通过确定公共需求，将生物学学生与公民参与联系起来；通过在早期实验室课程中进行动手研究探索，开发多模式方法来解决问题，培训学生最先进的技术；参与建立与STEM职业领域的同行和专家的网络；并促进科学批判性思维，通过交付成果为现实生活中的问题提供实际解决方案。这项工作将通过开发一种快速污染物检测测试，建立和改善将在当地产生积极环境影响的联系。来自两年制社区学院、四年制大学、研究机构、行业联络人以及纽约市民政办公室的STEMCEL合作伙伴将共同努力，在课程和现实生活实施过程中丰富学生的研究和网络经验。STEMCEL网络将把职业探索纳入本科早期课程，以扩大学生对他们进入大学时熟悉的医疗保健相关领域以外其他有价值和重要的职业道路的看法。该项目将在全国范围内推广，因为环境污染是全国的一个主要问题。STEMCEL的理念是创建包含真实研究的课程，为全国范围内的大型数据集做出贡献，同时教育我们的学生了解各种STEM职业。该项目由生物科学局生物基础设施部和教育与人力资源局本科教育司共同资助，作为应对《本科生物学教育的愿景与变革：行动号召》中提出的挑战的努力的一部分(http://visionandchange/finalreport/).This奖反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估被认为值得支持。

Students in STEM majors nationwide frequently fail to translate course learning experiences into career aspirations. Course content often lacks connections to societal issues or fail to address public problems using skills students developed in their majors. The STEM Career Exploration Laboratory Network (STEMCEL) is designed to develop and implement a “course to community and career skillset” approach to enhance students’ civic engagement and encourage them to explore a variety of STEM careers that can bring socioeconomic advancement.The Network will build a bridge between community problems and educational institutions by having students apply their classroom curricula to develop solutions to societal and social justice needs. An example is development of rapid environmental testing tools that contribute to identifying and monitoring contaminated local sites. The overarching goals of the STEMCEL incubator are to: connect biology students to civic-engagement by identifying communal needs, develop a multimodal approach to the problem through hands-on research exploration in early laboratory courses that will train students in state-of-the art techniques, participate in building a network with peers and experts in the fields of STEM careers, and advance scientific critical thinking to provide practical solutions to real-life problems with deliverables. This work will establish and improve connections that will result in positive environmental impact in local regions, by developing a rapid contaminant detection test. STEMCEL partners from 2-year community colleges, 4-year colleges, research institutes, industrial liaisons as well as New York city civil offices, will work together to enrich the students’ research and networking experiences in the curricula and in real-life implementation processes. The STEMCEL network will bring career exploration into early undergraduate curricula to expand students’ view of other rewarding and important career paths outside of the healthcare-related fields that they are familiar with when they enter college. The project will be scalable nationwide, as environmental contaminants are a major issue for the whole country. The STEMCEL philosophy is to create courses incorporating authentic research that contribute to large data sets nationwide while educating our students to the variety of STEM careers available. This project is being jointly funded by the Directorate for Biological Sciences, Division of Biological Infrastructure, and the Directorate for Education and Human Resources, Division of Undergraduate Education as part of their efforts to address the challenges posed in Vision and Change in Undergraduate Biology Education: A Call to Action (http://visionandchange/finalreport/).This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.