STEM Pathways: ASMSA initiative sees more growth
For the third consecutive year, the Arkansas School for Mathematics, Sciences, and the Arts’ STEM Pathways initiative saw record enrollment numbers, serving 3,863 students across the state, compared to 3,315 last year.
STEM Pathways is hybrid online learning and teacher professional development program that began in 2015 with the Coding Arkansas’ Future initiative. It allowed high schools to expand their computer science curriculum with support from ASMSA staff. Along with the Computer Science Plus cohort, it now includes an Advanced Biology Plus cohort and an Advanced Statistics Plus cohort.
“One of the primary things is the staff, our instructors for STEM Pathways,” program Director Lori Kagebein said of the record growth. “They give everything they have, absolutely everything to these teachers. I mean, they don’t look at it as a job or a chore. It’s something they enjoy doing.”
The Computer Science Plus program currently serves 3,124 students and 62 teachers across the state. The Advanced Biology Plus program is serving 323 students and 24 teachers, as well as an additional 312 students and 31 educators who use the program’s curriculum in their classroom. Advanced Statistics Plus, in the second year of its pilot program, provides curriculum and support for six instructors and approximately 100 students.
“We try to make sure we’re there, we’re available,” she said. “We want to be. We enjoy that part of our job. And when you get people like that in the role to support those teachers, the teachers know it. I’ve had teachers in computer science that have said, ‘Yes, the curriculum is phenomenal,’ and they love it. But they come back every year because they get that support.”
Kagebein noted she was “shocked” by the growth in computer science, due to the changes in graduation requirements this year. She said there is talk about expanding the cohort to include cybersecurity and networking along with the computer programming path already in place.
“They’re not saying we’re going to leave the program and go do this. They’re saying, ‘Within the program, can we help you branch out … so that we can go to even bigger and better places?’” she said.
ASMSA Biology instructors Patrycja Krakowiak and Whitney Holden increased their school visits this year in the Advanced Biology Plus cohort. However, several schools actually come to ASMSA.
“They’re bringing their students and they’re doing a lab in one of our labs upstairs,” she said. “They’re pulling out all the stops for these kiddos so that they can do these projects. So not only are they bringing students here, they’re going out to those school visits. They’re visiting with those teachers.”
The number of teachers in the Advanced Statistics Plus cohort doubled this year, from three to six.
ASMSA Director Corey Alderdice said in a news release that ASMSA, as a “statewide center of academic equity and opportunity,” ignites the full potential of “students and educators.”
“Since 1999, ASMSA has seen our outreach programs evolve along with new technologies that meet the needs of teachers across Arkansas,” he said. “As we look ahead to the new online course choice program that is part of the Arkansas LEARNS Act, we believe there will be continued opportunities for ASMSA to exhibit leadership in ensuring students have access to advanced STEM experiences.”
While the program covers the entire state, Kagebein said they have begun to see participants from other states as well. She noted that recently an educator from Connecticut contacted the school after hearing about the program’s Praxis prep course, and asked to use the curriculum with her students.
“So it’s actually ballooning out to teachers not in our state. We had a teacher from, I think it was Texas, that went to our biology boot camp this year. So that’s pretty cool too. But a lot of it is word-of-mouth. We do go to some conferences and let people know that we’re out there, but nothing says as much as one teacher saying, ‘Man, I really need some help with computer science.’ Or ‘statistics,’ or ‘biology.’ And someone else going, ‘I’ve got the perfect program for you,’” she said.