[This content was pulled from the St. Mary’s County proposal to Maryland Space Grant.]
St. Mary’s County Public Schools is deeply committed to STEM education. Our district’s STEM Vision:
St. Mary’s County Public Schools (SMCPS) seeks to provide a continuous pathway of education through opportunity that creates STEM-literate graduates ready to accept the challenges of advanced education and the needs of tomorrow’s workforce.
We have created a STEM Consortium that incorporates opportunities for students to participate in new and innovative STEM opportunities such as Summer Space Camp, STARBASE Atlantis, and various design and innovative competitions. At the core of the Consortium resides our STEM Academies at the elementary, middle, and high school levels. This year we will have students in grades 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 attending our academies. Our projected enrollment for our academies is three hundred and ninety eight (398) students; ninety-six (96) at elementary school, one hundred forty-four (144) at middle school and one hundred fifty eight (158) at high school.
Additionally, St. Mary’s County Public Schools “STEM FOR ALL” Plan envisions opportunities for ALL of our students, not just those in the STEM Academies. Every student in every class at every level has at least one opportunity to engage in an engineering design project through our curriculum. Additionally, students have many opportunities to participate in extracurricular activities such as Destination ImagiNation, MESA, Science Fair and Robotics. Funding from this grant will allow us to continue our efforts by expanding our student opportunities for designing an experiment to fly on the last Space Shuttle.
Our program’s strength flows from our partnerships with the Naval Air Station, Patuxent River as well as the Naval Air Warfare Center-Aircraft Division (NAWC-AD). We are also partnering with higher education via St. Mary’s College of Maryland, College of Southern Maryland, and St. Mary’s Hospital. NAWC-AD has funded a project manager that is serving as their STEM Coordinator. Through these relationships, we will provide our students internships with industry representatives and mentors to support their Capstone Projects in STEM 5, 8, and 12. Industry support for the Capstone Projects is mostly in-kind. Mentors from SAIC (Science Applications International Corporation) are collaborating with our STEM 8 students on revising and editing their multimedia presentations. Students in STEM 11 are currently formalizing their Senior Capstone Projects with mentors from our partnerships including St. Mary’s Hospital, NAWC-AD, NAS, and other community organizations.
All of the STEM Academies exemplify the intent of the Maryland Technology Literacy Standards for Students. The major part of the curriculum embraces the problem solving process of investigating problems and proposing solutions (Standard 6). Projects in all the grades incorporate all of the technology standards but particularly emphasize Standards 3-6 (Collaboration, Community and Expression; Information Use and Management; and Problem-Solving and Decision-Making), especially in preparation for the Capstone Projects.
