DES MOINES, Iowa – The Iowa Governor’s STEM Advisory Council at the Iowa Department of Education today announced the opportunity for Iowa educators to apply to expand and launch world-class STEM Scale-Up programs for the 2024-25 academic year. STEM Scale-Up empowers educators to provide students with a diverse range of STEM units and activities, serving over 100,000 students each year.
“By empowering teachers across Iowa to provide experiential STEM learning opportunities, STEM Scale-Up deepens student knowledge and engagement, supporting Iowa’s strong talent pipeline for in-demand STEM jobs,” said Iowa Department of Education Director McKenzie Snow. “These programs support mastery of core STEM content through project-based learning, spanning agriculture, architecture, artificial intelligence, engineering and robotics, technology, and more.”
Students who participate in STEM Scale-Up have historically performed better on the Iowa Statewide Assessment of Student Progress (ISASP) compared to students who do not participate. Last year, students scored three percentage points higher on the ISASP in mathematics compared to all students statewide. Additionally, STEM Scale-Up participants who graduated from high school between 2017 and 2021 were more likely to choose a STEM major in college than students who did not participate in the program.
Through STEM Scale-Up, the following 14 evidence-based programs will be offered to pre-K-12 educators across Iowa for the 2024-2025 academic year:
- All About Balance
- Artificial Intelligence for K-12 Educators
- Blackbird Code
- Derivita Math Program
- Exploring and Connecting to Iowa’s Agriculture
- FUSE Studio
- Investigating Everyday Phenomena
- Making Innovative STEM Connections (MISC)
- Positive Physics, Chemistry, Physical Science, Biology, Environmental Science & Engineering
- Robo Wunderkind STEM Program
- Spatial Vis: The First Stepin Design for Engineering and Technology
- Storytime STEM-backs
- Teachley Math
- Turing Tumble
These fourteen programs were selected from over eighty proposals from across the country based on the STEM Council’s strategic priorities that are aligned to workforce needs: agricultural science, computational thinking, early learning, ecology and energy education, mathematics, STEM and arts integration, STEM careers, integration into existing curriculum and transdisciplinary learning. A team of expert reviewers also considered evidence of effect, scalability, diversity impact, cost-benefit ratio, sustainability and alignment with Iowa’s academic standards when selecting final programs.
The application period for the STEM Scale-Up Program closes on Feb. 28, at 4:59 p.m. Awardees will be announced in April.
Visit www.iowastem.org/scale-up-
