Designing and Developing Summer K-12 STEM Outreach Programs Through a Tenure-Track Faculty’s Perspective

While projected science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) job employment increases of 10% are expected by 2033, the number of trained professionals is not expected to keep up with that demand.In 2025, it is projected to include 3.5 million new STEM related jobs.However, the current workforce is not qualified to completely fill those new positions.As a result, it is imperative that we reach K-12 students in STEM fields to inspire and educate students to pursue STEM related fields.Students face a struggle especially in rural areas where they either are unprepared or have low interest levels in the STEM fields.West Virginia ranks in the bottom of states in K-12 education and percentage of people carrying bachelor or professional level degrees.Part of this can be contributed to not being able to keep excellent K-12 teachers due to low salaries.West Virginia ranks near the bottom of K-12 teacher salary despite a more positive trend in recent salary increases.In this work, the author's perspective in developing and designing summer outreach programs to increase the STEM interest levels of K-12 while offering training and programming to K-12 teachers is presented.Especially at smaller universities, recruitment and retention can be key areas of focus.From 2021 to present, the author has hosted six summer programs from grades 6-12.Overall, through these programs, 190 students and 9 teachers have participated in summer STEM programming on the WVU Tech campus.While WVU Tech is a teaching focus institution, research and service still contribute to the decision promotion and tenure of faculty.For smaller institutions where teaching duties may be high or dedicated research facilities may not be available, it may be beneficial for a faculty to expand their scholarship to educational opportunities.Funding security is an important effort for making sure these camps can run with faculty and staff on 9-month contracts.Additionally, WVU Tech is in the southern part of West Virginia where low-income families make up a sizable portion of the community.Without offering financial assistance, many of the students who have attended these summer camps would not be able.Funding has been secured through small industrial grants, state programs such as West Virginia Health Sciences and Technology Academy, and through partnerships with other universities and U.S. Department of Education grants.Using post-surveys for the camps, it will be shown that overall enjoyment of the camp environment is around 90% and has improved STEM interest levels in campers attending the camps.The challenges of a tenure track faculty running these programs include disproportional amounts of time for service and scholarship to run camps, funding, learning organization within the university structure, hiring of student mentors, recruiting other faculty, recruitment of students, and more.Strategies to overcome some of these issues will be presented.