Wrapping up 2023 for the Afterschool STEM Hub

As 2023 comes to a close, the Afterschool STEM Hub is reflecting on the past year and looking to the year ahead. In working towards our vision of a STEM learning community where high-quality afterschool programs are respected, well-resourced, and accessible for all youth, in 2023, we created tools for advocates, leveraged collaborative partnerships, and began building relationships with legislative offices. Internally, we declared our commitment to equity through our equity statement and welcomed new members, such as the American Indian Science and Engineering Society (AISES), STEM Ecosystems, and the Association of Children’s Museums.

Looking back

To support advocates in making the case for afterschool STEM, our research working group released an updated research brief documenting the various ways that afterschool programs have become essential partners in STEM education by offering engaging STEM enrichment experiences that support and enhance what is learned during the school day. We also updated the advocacy toolkit on our website with resources, including data, talking points, stories, and visuals to support you in sparking more STEM programming throughout communities. 

To guide our re-energized policy work, we have been listening to and learning from programs, such as Together Friends Organization, the Boys and Girls Club of Northern Utah, Imagine Science, and the New Hampshire Academy of Science, to learn what the needs and successes are on the ground. We also published our Core Principles and Policy Priorities document, which asks policymakers to increase access to high-quality afterschool STEM programs for every student, facilitate high-quality programming through partnerships and professional development, and acknowledge and highlight the role of afterschool STEM programs.

In leveraging the diversity of our members, we were able to provide input from both the research and practitioner perspective to initiatives and programs that have the potential to impact the afterschool STEM community, including the STEMM Opportunity Alliance’s National Strategy for Equity and Excellence in STEM, the Institute for Education Science’s innovative From Seedlings to Scale Program, and the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy Five-Year STEM Strategic Plan. 

We have weighed in with lawmakers on the importance of investing in programs that support STEM education across the federal agencies. We contributed to the development of bipartisan legislation, such as an update to The Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA), providing recommendations to ensure that STEM-rich institutions and science centers are included as work-based learning sites for career connected learning experiences. We also provided collaborative input on the bipartisan reauthorization of The Education Sciences Reform Act (ESRA) to ensure that the research conducted to advance youth and educator outcomes is flexible and captures the various methods necessary to reflect real-world impact.

Looking ahead

In looking forward to 2024, we are excited to grow our membership, advocate more strategically at the federal policy level, and continue to be a resource hub for those working at the intersection of research, practice, and policy for afterschool STEM. We will build on our legislative successes of 2023 by continuing to weigh in as the WIOA and ESRA packages move though the legislative process, and work with Congressional STEM education and afterschool advocates on other proposals. Further, the STEM education and workforce development elements of the implementation of The CHIPS and Science Act continue to be of great interest to our members. We will release our inaugural research review newsletter in early 2024, which will have briefings on recent research from the field accompanied by an analysis of their implications for practice and policy.

Thank you to all the supporters of afterschool STEM out there! We know that afterschool STEM programs help to foster belonging in STEM and to maintain that spark to grow a more diverse STEM workforce and a STEM-literate society.

We want to continue learning from you and to be a resource for you - please follow us on LinkedIn, email us with any questions stemhub@afterschoolalliance.org, and be on the lookout for our research review newsletter in the new year.

Happy New Year, everyone!