What's New

In the virtual and hybrid school environment that students and teachers have had to embrace as their new reality, recruitment and data collection have been among the most difficult adaptations for ITEST projects to make. STELAR connected with 5 ITEST projects to find out what major challenges they faced in implementing their projects during the pandemic. We found that although many stakeholders involved in the ITEST project implementation have

The “Solicitation Specific Review Criteria” section of your proposal should draw out the elements of your intervention design that has been informed by empirically-backed approaches to leverage student strengths...

As the resource center for the NSF ITEST Program, STELAR assists both ITEST grantees and those interested in submitting a proposal. Each year we host solicitation webinars on behalf of NSF, which allow program officers to provide direct information and answer questions from participants. While the webinars are crucial to understanding the requirements of the program, we would like to highlight additional tools, resources, and information that are freely available to assist proposal writers.

Throughout history, advances in technology have drastically changed how humans live and work. But today, innovations such as artificial intelligence, big data, robotics, and biotechnology are so revolutionary—and occurring so quickly—that they have the potential to upend whole industries and entire communities. How we interact with these advanced technologies may also challenge long-standing beliefs about the divisions between human and machine.

Our recently-released paper explores the future of work, expanding the conversation to include the importance of work for social stability, the challenges associated with broadening participation at the Human-Technology Frontier, the psycho-social factors affecting career development at the Human-Technology Frontier and illustrate how the NSF ITEST program is uniquely positioned to add value as an early intervention model for building a robust future ready STEM workforce.

In exploring the summer activies of ITEST projects, STELAR recently caught up with Karla Eitel of the University of Idaho, Prinicpal Investigator for the Building STEM Identity and Career Interests in Native American Students By Using Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) and Remote Sensing Technologies project. How did your ITEST project impact youth this summer? Our project exposed 40 Native and rural youth to careers in Fisheries, Forestry and Fire

As part of our series exploring what ITEST projects have been up to in the summer of 2017, we learned about the work of Strengthening the STEM Pipeline for Elementary School African Americans, Hispanics, and Girls by Scaling Up Summer Engineering Experiences led by Principal Investigator Karl Reid of the National Society of Black Engineers. How did your ITEST project impact youth this summer?  Our ITEST grant provides research funding to scale up

As part of our series exploring the work of ITEST projects over the summer months, STELAR connected with Prinicipal Investigator Vikram Kapila of New York University's Tandon School of Engineering on his project, "Promoting Robotic Design and Entrepreneurship Experiences among Students and Teachers." How did your ITEST project impact youth this summer? Our ITEST project provided hands-on learning opportunities to youth using authentic tools and

STELAR recently connected with Principal Investigator Jody Clarke-Midura of Utah State University to find out what her project, Understanding the Role of Gender in Engaging the Interest of Girls in Computer Science, did over the summer. How did your ITEST project impact youth this summer? During the summer of 2017, we conducted five camps on programming apps with MIT’s App Inventor. One camp provided high school youth with training in mentoring

About 50 researchers and practitioners from around the country convened at the University of Texas at San Antonio on May 2-3, 2017, to set an agenda for research and practice towards making engineering and engineering education more equitable.