Kim Van Wie, Executive Director, STARBASE Minnesota The Twin

STARBASE Minnesota — Kim Van Wie, Executive Director, STARBASE Minnesota
The Twin Cities is home to nineteen Fortune 500 companies, twenty seven Fortune 1000
companies and several of the world’s largest private companies, representing IT, biomedical,
chemical, financial, healthcare, electronics, advanced manufacturing, and robotics to name a
few prominent industry sectors — innovation is their
lifeblood. Fortunately, since 1993 STARBASE Minnesota
has been actively preparing the next generation of creative,
STEM-skilled problem solvers to help take on the challenges
that these high-tech employers of today and tomorrow
require.
For over 20 years STARBASE Minnesota has provided
exciting, innovative and evidence-based programming to
over 45,000 Twin Cities’ youth, transforming science,
technology, engineering and math (STEM) to disciplines of
relevance and applicability. Breaking the mold of
traditional and even modern-day practice where science, math and technology education are
approached as discreet and theoretical subjects, STARBASE Minnesota immerses students in a
stimulating and integrated STEM environment abundant with accessible technology that fuels
student excitement about learning. The granting of nearly $2 million of minor military
construction funding along with corporate classroom sponsorships, together, have helped
create a state of the art facility and one-of-a-kind environment for high caliber curriculum and
instruction that has become an educational lab and model for the state. “STARBASE Minnesota
provides an exemplary model of integrated STEM for our state. The program employs best
practice instruction engaging students with intentionally designed learning experiences as they
explore scientific and engineering questions and problems”, said Doug Paulson, STEM
Specialist, Division of Academic Standards and Instructional Effectiveness, MN Department of
Education.
With educating and inspiring over 3,400 students each year comes a great deal of responsibility
for ensuring that the love of STEM in STARBASE students continues to burn hot long after
participation in the program. STARBASE 2.0 is one way in which STARBASE Minnesota and
many sites around the country have engaged volunteers in this endeavor. Whether it’s helping
Twin Cities’ students tackle engineering feats in this year’s “Nature’s Fury” robotics challenge or
aiding students in their design of renewable energy sources, the MN National Guard with its
goal of strengthening awareness and connections in the community directly benefits from their
participation in the after-school STEM program of STARBASE 2.0. STARBASE Minnesota’s
partnerships with over 20 corporations — including 3M, BAE Systems, Boston Scientific,
Cummins Power, Delta, Ecolab, General Mills, Medtronic, Microsoft, St. Jude Medical, Stratasys,
Xcel Energy and others — play a key role in partnering with STARBASE to bring STEM industry
relevance to STARBASE programs and engagement with students that evokes curiosity and
excitement about a future STEM career. The military, government, business, industry and
schools have all invested in STARBASE in Minnesota.
To bring post-STARBASE experiences to a greater scale STARBASE Minnesota developed
additional strategies that range from the very simple to more complex. The STARBASE
Minnesota virtual student Clubhouse is one easy way where individual students, as well as
whole classrooms have continued their pursuit of STEM with online lessons and activities. Since
Clubhouse doors opened, over 10,000
post-STARBASE lessons have been
conducted. STARBASE Minnesota
initiated the development of a
Community of Practice in STEM and what
started out as a collaborative of 40 STEM
practitioners and policy makers has now
become its own organization — MN
STEM Network —with over 200
members. STEM hubs have since formed
around the state, the STEM inventory
originally developed by STARBASE Minnesota is being built upon for a state-wide inventory,
STEM Day at the State Fair has now become an annual state-wide awareness and STEM
celebration campaign, regular conferences and other STEM initiatives help promote greater
collaboration, awareness, access to and enthusiasm for STEM in the state of Minnesota. Along
with these strategies that gain further momentum each year, STARBASE continues its long time
relationships with area colleges and universities to provide field experiences for pre-service
teachers in the critical role of helping to develop the next wave of STEM educators.
One of the most exciting new initiatives of STARBASE Minnesota is the “STEM Pathways”
project. Inspired by the promising results of the longitudinal study of former STARBASE
Minnesota students conducted by Wilder Research, STARBASE Minnesota initiated a
partnership between Minneapolis Public Schools, MN Department of Education and seven
STEM nonprofit organizations in the community to develop an innovative, educational model
that leverages and links student STEM learning between partner organizations to form a
deliberate, contiguous and illuminated pathway for greater long term student success in STEM.
Each of these STEM nonprofits have an outstanding reputation with area school districts and in
the broader community and while all are well aligned with state standards and district needs,
they have historically developed programming independent of each other. STEM Pathways
endeavors to change that, to transform how these Twin Cities’ STEM organizations go about
designing, developing and implementing programs, to collaborate extensively in that work. The
linkages, connections and consistencies between partner organizations developed will be
evident to all participants and a clear STEM pathway for students throughout school years will
be lit. Further, STEM Pathways will establish a long term internal and external K-12 STEM
education plan for the district and all STEM partners for years to come. Wilder Research will
study the impacts of this model which, in the second year will be expanded across more grade
levels with additional community partners. Funding for the development of this model and
evaluation of the first year of this project was made possible by DoD STARBASE. Boston
Scientific, who expressed great interest in this work granted $75,000 to STARBASE Minnesota
for the STEM Pathway’s second year.

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