This project will advance efforts to understand and promote practices that increase students' motivations and capacities to pursue careers in STEM by preparing students in high need middle schools for science and math courses, and engineering careers.

Leveraging the constructionist design paradigm and project-based service learning, the project will investigate how framing STEM practices to contribute to and improve one's community might increase student interest in STEM fields

The project immerses up to 4000 youth (Grades 6-8) in simulated internships that mirror the collaborative computing and computational work of practicing scientists, and that can be embedded within a school's core science curriculum.

350 youth (grades 2-5), 100 caregivers, 16+ librarians, and 16+ engineers participate in a library education program centered on engaging youth with age-appropriate, technology-rich STEM learning experiences fundamental to the engineering process.

Fifty children ages 5-8 and their adult caregivers, from underrepresented New York City populations, participate in a 6-week workshop series offering playful, hands-on, collaborative exploration of foundational concepts of modeling and analyzing data.