The Urban Community Project to Stimulate Interests in STEM Careers (U-CPS) project of Fisk University is a three-year project designed to provide challenging and stimulating learning experiences to middle school students by providing high quality professional development experiences for three cohorts of 15 middle and high school teachers through the development of learning modules.

This project develops an interdisciplinary and transformative in- and out of-school science education and technology program that engages high school aged youth and their teachers in 1) the production of food using hydroponics, and 2) the use of green energy technologies (solar, and wind) to power hydroponic systems. This distinctive program integrates food production, a novel model of parental outreach, a focus on green career development, and an authentic reason (growing their own produce for selling at a market) for learning how and why to use alternative energy technologies.

This is a four-year Information Technology Experiences for Students and Teachers (ITEST) scale-up project aimed at developing Computational Thinking (CT) with 200 teachers and 15,000 middle school students in nine states' diverse learning environments, such as urban, remote rural areas, and Native American communities. Embedded in existing computing education and STEM courses, the project-developed curriculum--Scalable Game Design (SGD)--introduces students to CT through game design and advances them to STEM simulation design.

The project aims at helping middle school students understand the relationship between energy, economics, and climate change by monitoring home-energy consumption. Students use energy-monitoring equipment to assess the amount of stand-by power consumed by their home appliances and entertainment devices when these units are powered off. Service-Learning is the theoretical foundation underlying the project, which is based on a student empowerment model that values their contributions to solve problems.

This ITEST strategies project is providing high school students with experiences in robotics to galvanize their interest in STEM and prepare them for STEM programs at the college level. The project is delivering a pre-engineering experience, advanced math coursework, and project-based instruction. High school teachers receive technical training to build their STEM teaching competencies. Over 100 underrepresented students are being recruited from MC2 STEM High School in the Cleveland Metropolitan School District.

The Marine Advanced Technology Education (MATE) Center at the Monterey Community College in collaboration with Washington State University is engaging in a scale-up study of the remote operated vehicle (ROV) program to new audiences of middle and high school students and teachers. Using a train the trainers approach, the MATE ROV project is conducting at least 45 regional professional development workshops in 15 regions for a total of 500 teachers.

This project is developing and testing a collaborative game-based interactive environment where students, ages 12-18 form a product design team to create a concept model and pitch for a sport product design challenge. Participants, sport researchers, and product experts determine the best pitches with awards for top designs. SportsLab:2020 brings together pedagogical frameworks from game- and project-based learning together with design challenge curriculum that foster learning and understanding of 21st Century skills and STEM concepts.

The Marine Technology for Teachers and Students (MaTTS) program provides opportunities for teams of teachers and students from southern New England to experience new technologies related to exploring the global ocean, discover pathways in marine careers using these new tools, and develop leadership capacity. These interventions are being evaluated to determine their impact on the skills, knowledge, practices, and attitudes of the teachers and students that are related to the STEM workforce. Partner school districts include high-need schools.

The Memphis Virtual STEM Academy at East High School project investigates the implementation of a virtual STEM curriculum that utilizes self-paced modules, face-to-face STEM laboratory projects, and field experiences designed to help students (grades 9-12) understand pre-engineering concepts and principles as well as develop an interest in and motivation to pursue STEM and ICT careers.

Bioinformatics: the Rutgers Initiative in Teacher Enhancement (BRITE) is an NSF ITEST Comprehensive Project that involves teachers and their students. BRITE invites high school teachers to participate in, and contribute to, a series of scientific "Challenges" posted over the World Wide Web, the answers to which require using the computational tools of molecular biology, structural biology, and bioinformatics. Over the period of the grant, BRITE will work closely with teachers participating in a Local Project and remotely with teachers who participate in a Regional Project.