Teams from six Milwaukee area high schools and five middle schools were challenged to design, build and operate an ROV to identify an unknown shipwreck recently discovered in the Thunder Bay National Marine Sanctuary waters, collect microbial samples and remove trash and debris from the shipwreck and surrounding area, in a “Remotely Operated Vehicle Competition" in Milwalkee, Wisconsin. Eventually, the hope is that these students want to take

District 57 is placing a major emphasis on the critical subjects of science, technology, engineering and math (STEM curriculum), through extracurricular offerings and enhanced school-day lessons that help prepare students to be the next generation of leaders in STEM-related fields. STEM curriculum has become a major focus in education, because the subjects play an important role in the high-tech, high-skill global economy that eventually will

STELAR collaborated with ITEST projects on a number of conference symposium proposals during 2014 for the 2015 conference year. We are thrilled that these three proposals have been selected so far. Learn more about the two presentations we will be leading at AERA and the one planned for NARST. NARST 2015 in Chicago: "Designing Programs that Engage, Motivate, and Interest Youth to Pursue STEM Careers across the NSF Funded ITEST program" with ITEST

This article in Scientific American features the ITEST project Predicting STEM Career Choice from Computational Indicators of Student Engagement within Middle School Mathematics Classes. The article details efforts to bring more rigorous science to classrooms and research that is showing that our intuitions about education may be wrong.