SCI-TALKS (Supporting Community Initiatives for Teaching, Learning, and Knowing Science), an ITEST strategies project, is designed to deliver after-school energy and environment (EE) education programs in community settings for rural low-income upper elementary students in West Virginia. The goal of SCI-TALKS is to provide pre-service and in-service teachers with professional development and technology resources to ensure that their students build workforce readiness skills through EE education program.

This project will enable high school and middle school STEM teachers and students to conduct environmental research aided by the analysis of images from digital cameras, scanners, and the Internet. The project explores how digital image analysis can be applied to environmental quality issues that can readily be introduced into STEM courses, engaging students and encouraging them to think about related careers. The project will develop research agendas that will employ a variety of image analysis tools.

The Computer Science (CS) community believes that it has an important role to play in educating the public about the excitement of Computer Science (CS) and the lucrative and interesting career opportunities this field offers. In western Pennsylvania, most high school students are not being provided an opportunity to learn about the science of computing nor about the breadth of the field.

The Barcode of Life Initiative (BOLI) is an international biodiversity collaboration that creates a genetic encyclopedia of Earth's plants and animals using short DNA sequences that uniquely identify species groups. The goal of this strategies project is to interest students in STEM careers by engaging them in an international project to provide identification of biological species.

Comprehensive Information Technology Education in Rural Appalachia (CITERA) emphasizes career and educational pathways and provides information technology (IT) skills and knowledge to North Central West Virginia 7th through 9th grade educators and students. CITERA seeks to meet the current need for technology workers in the United States by introducing students to IT concepts and careers at an early age through workshops and student IT-STEM modules.

This comprehensive ITEST project will provide sixty middle and high school teachers with an introduction to Geographic Information System (GIS) and Global Positioning System (GPS) technologies. The project, which brings together a leadership team of educators, science researchers and experts in resource management, is based at the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science Appalachian Laboratory, a research facility that studies stream and forest ecosystems.

The Pulsar Search Collaboratory project (PSC) will engage 60 West Virginia teachers and 600 students in world class research in radio astronomy through the analysis of data collected using the Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope (GBT).