K-12 community engagement: Middle School
Each year, the Verizon Innovative Learning STEM Achievers’ Program at CSUSB receives $150,000 from the Verizon Foundation to provide free informal STEM learning opportunities to low-income, underrepresented middle school students. WECO STEM Education Faculty members collaborate with local middle schools to provide two 3-week summer camps (75 students each camp), one Spring semester Open-House event and one Fall semester Open-House event each year. The program provides hands-on, project-based STEM learning experiences that emphasizes engineering design, 3D-design and printing, electronics, robotics, programming, augmented reality and virtual reality, infused with entrepreneurship. This is an important STEM engagement program for low-income minority middle school students in the region we serve. 2023 is the 7th year of the WCOE running this program. Students who participated in the program in 2016 now are college students. Some of them are studying at CSUSB and two of them become STEM Educators in the San Bernardino Unified School District!
2022 Summer Camps
June 6 to July 22. We had two 3-week camps and 150 middle schoolers from five middle schools in San Bernardino County (San Bernardino, Fontana, and Upland). 3 CSUSB faculty members (Eun-Ok Baek, Xinying Yin and Halil Tasova), 12 middle school teachers, 5 graduate assistants (4 from MA in STEM Education,1 from Instructional Design and Technology), and 15 high schoolers as mentors participated in the program. The camp includes classes on engineering design, coding, robotics, 3D design and printing, electronics, virtual reality and augmented reality. We also did a campus tour, innovation lab, RAFFMA museum, went on a field trip to Garner Holt Production, Inc., participated in the Leadership Challenge Course with the Recreational Center, and had a Verizon Employee Virtual Speaker.
2023 Summer Camps
In 2023, two summer camps, one from May 30 to June 16, another from June 5 to June 23 were held. A total of 150 students from Curtis Middle School, Almeria Middle School, Sequoia Middle School and Foothill Knolls STEM Academy of Innovation, participated in the two summer camps. Other than STEM classes, students also took a campus tour, innovation lab tour, RAFFMA museum tour, participated in a 4-hour Leadership Challenge Course with the Recreational Center, and participated in a 2-hour financial education workshop activity provided by the SchoolsFirst Federal Credit Union.
Semester Open House Events
We also had three Open-House events during Fall 2022, Spring 2023 and Fall 2023 Open-Houses. At each open house, we had 150 students come to the campus for STEM activities. In Fall 2023, we also collaborated with the science department faculty and student volunteers to provide physics, earth-space science and computer science activities. Students and middle school teachers rated highly for the events.
