Designing and Developing Summer K-12 STEM Outreach Programs Through a Tenure-Track Faculty’s Perspective

Nathan Galinsky

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Conference: 2025 ASEE North Central Section (NCS) Annual Conference
Location: Marshall University, Huntington, West Virginia
Publication Date: March 28, 2025
Start Date: March 28, 2025
End Date: March 29, 2025
Tagged Topic: Diversity
Page Count: 12
DOI: 10.18260/1-2--54656
Permanent URL: https://peer.asee.org/54656
Download Count: 16

Paper Authors

biography

Nathan Galinsky West Virginia University Institute of Technology

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Dr. Nathan Galinsky is a tenure-track faculty in the chemical engineering department at WVU Tech since 2019. He has been actively involved in outreach within the university running six summer outreach programs since 2021 and being actively involved within the department and university in K-12 outreach, recruitment, and retention efforts. His educational research interests are on K-12 outreach, developing more engaging out of class assignments for college students, and active learning.

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Abstract

While projected science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) job employment increases of 10% are expected by 2033, the number of trained professionals is not expected to keep up with that demand. In 2025, it is projected to include 3.5 million new STEM related jobs. However, the current workforce is not qualified to completely fill those new positions. As a result, it is imperative that we reach K-12 students in STEM fields to inspire and educate students to pursue STEM related fields. Students face a struggle especially in rural areas where they either are unprepared or have low interest levels in the STEM fields. West Virginia ranks in the bottom of states in K-12 education and percentage of people carrying bachelor or professional level degrees. Part of this can be contributed to not being able to keep excellent K-12 teachers due to low salaries. West Virginia ranks near the bottom of K-12 teacher salary despite a more positive trend in recent salary increases.

In this work, the author’s perspective in developing and designing summer outreach programs to increase the STEM interest levels of K-12 while offering training and programming to K-12 teachers is presented. Especially at smaller universities, recruitment and retention can be key areas of focus. From 2021 to present, the author has hosted six summer programs from grades 6-12. Overall, through these programs, 190 students and 9 teachers have participated in summer STEM programming on the WVU Tech campus. This perspective piece is through the lens of a tenure track faculty who must provide excellent teaching, scholarship, and service to the university. This summer K-12 outreach contributes to the professional development, scholarship, and service requirements of a tenure-track position. Funding securement is important to ensure the costs per student are low to increase participation for the low-income families. WVU Tech is in the southern part of West Virginia where low-income family’s make-up a sizable portion of the community. Without offering financial assistance, many of the students who have attended these summer camps would not be able. Funding has been secured through small industrial grants, state programs such as the West Virginia Higher Education Policy Commission and West Virginia Health Sciences and Technology Academy, and through partnerships with other universities and U.S. Department of Education grants. The challenges of a tenure track faculty running these programs include disproportional amounts of time for service and scholarship to run camps, funding, learning organization within the university structure, hiring of student mentors, recruiting other faculty, recruitment of students, and more. Strategies to overcome some of these issues will be presented.

Citation
Format

Galinsky, N. (2025, March), Designing and Developing Summer K-12 STEM Outreach Programs Through a Tenure-Track Faculty’s Perspective Paper presented at 2025 ASEE North Central Section (NCS) Annual Conference, Marshall University, Huntington, West Virginia. 10.18260/1-2--54656

TY - CPAPER
AB -
While projected science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) job employment increases of 10% are expected by 2033, the number of trained professionals is not expected to keep up with that demand. In 2025, it is projected to include 3.5 million new STEM related jobs. However, the current workforce is not qualified to completely fill those new positions. As a result, it is imperative that we reach K-12 students in STEM fields to inspire and educate students to pursue STEM related fields. Students face a struggle especially in rural areas where they either are unprepared or have low interest levels in the STEM fields. West Virginia ranks in the bottom of states in K-12 education and percentage of people carrying bachelor or professional level degrees. Part of this can be contributed to not being able to keep excellent K-12 teachers due to low salaries. West Virginia ranks near the bottom of K-12 teacher salary despite a more positive trend in recent salary increases.

In this work, the author’s perspective in developing and designing summer outreach programs to increase the STEM interest levels of K-12 while offering training and programming to K-12 teachers is presented. Especially at smaller universities, recruitment and retention can be key areas of focus. From 2021 to present, the author has hosted six summer programs from grades 6-12. Overall, through these programs, 190 students and 9 teachers have participated in summer STEM programming on the WVU Tech campus. This perspective piece is through the lens of a tenure track faculty who must provide excellent teaching, scholarship, and service to the university. This summer K-12 outreach contributes to the professional development, scholarship, and service requirements of a tenure-track position. Funding securement is important to ensure the costs per student are low to increase participation for the low-income families. WVU Tech is in the southern part of West Virginia where low-income family’s make-up a sizable portion of the community. Without offering financial assistance, many of the students who have attended these summer camps would not be able. Funding has been secured through small industrial grants, state programs such as the West Virginia Higher Education Policy Commission and West Virginia Health Sciences and Technology Academy, and through partnerships with other universities and U.S. Department of Education grants. The challenges of a tenure track faculty running these programs include disproportional amounts of time for service and scholarship to run camps, funding, learning organization within the university structure, hiring of student mentors, recruiting other faculty, recruitment of students, and more. Strategies to overcome some of these issues will be presented.

AU - Nathan Galinsky
CY - Marshall University, Huntington, West Virginia
DA - 2025/03/28
PB - ASEE Conferences
TI - Designing and Developing Summer K-12 STEM Outreach Programs Through a Tenure-Track Faculty’s Perspective
UR - https://peer.asee.org/54656
DO - 10.18260/1-2--54656
ER -