AIM @AMROC: A STEAM Career ConnectED program

Only 30% of Hillsborough County Public Schools (HCPS) 217,000 students are white.  Over 90% of District schools are Title 1 schools. Current unemployment data for this area reflects the following: Hillsborough County 5.7%; Pasco County 5.5%; Pinellas County 5.2%. The poverty rate is 11.72% higher than the US average. An estimated 14.3% of 1,455,659 people live in poverty. Hillsborough County has experienced an 8.6% increase in housing costs in one year,  the highest rate in the Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater metro area, with the year-over-year rent jumping over 31%, the third highest in the nation overall.  This shows a great need for DEI and Gender Equity programs to build workforce development for K-to-Grey learning environments.

Over the last 3 years, there has been an over 40% turnover rate among HCPS CTE (STEM) teachers, with the supervisor of the STEM program changed 3 times in 5 years.  Hands-on Robotics and STEM programs have been reduced countywide, including 3 programs that were magnet programs in DEI communities, due to a lack of qualified teachers in the field.  In our experience providing hands-on training for CTE teachers, we’ve found that the majority are white and male, with less than 20% identifying as BIOPC.  Three female CTE teachers have left the school system in the last 6 months. 

To combat the teacher shortage, HCPS has brought in virtual education programs that use simulations, presentations, and certification tests to cover CTE courses, but provide no hands-on training portions and no actual instructor.  This creates an inhospitable STEM space for addressing Gender Equity issues, as research shows that BIPOC youth, particularly young women,  best find the strength to stay in traditionally non-diverse spaces by seeing examples, via teachers and mentors, of who they can become. The problem is exacerbated by programs that have been specifically targeted to meet DEI initiatives and receive national funding, but become a flashpoint for political infighting in the state. As a whole, this has a negative impact on Gender Equity in our community. 

We host competitive robotics and STEM competition programs for the Tampa Bay region and around Florida, at AMRoC, serving over 3000 youth a year.  AMRoC Fab Lab programs are not promoted as DEI or Gender Equity initiatives, but because we focus on accessible convergent learning experiences in a highly diverse area, with significant and visible female leadership, our programs naturally lend themselves to Gender Equity.

Our program is a redesign of how competitive robotics and afterschool STEAM programs can move from short bursts of fun explorations to a fully developed career pathway that can be replicated anywhere.  As a leadership team, we reviewed the skills an AMRoC participant learns starting when they first start playing with LEGOs and drawing to when they are able to design a full robot, CAD parts and fabricate them using 3D printer, laser cutters, and CNC routers in the AMROC machine shop, and compete as FIRST Robotics teams. We identified multiple career certifications that exist in the local school systems that match the skills our participants earn. But in schools, students spend months watching slide presentations and doing simulations to earn certifications yet lack the actual skills our participants have. Our career mentors confirm they would hire an AMRoC student over a student with public school-earned certifications because students in AMRoC programs emerge with actual relevant hands-on skills.   Armed with this knowledge, we began working with Hillsborough Community College (HCC) and the University of South Florida (USF) to explore how to bridge the gap for schools and our participants.

STEP 1. Build AIM@AMRoC youth programs that lead to micro-credentialing and certification programs with a career pathway to trade schools, community colleges, apprenticeships, internships, and even early access to an AAU research university. The AIM program is designed explicitly to address challenges that disproportionately keep girls from minority backgrounds and less prosperous communities out of Rapidly Evolving Science and Technology (REST) career fields, including providing authentic motivation and meaning, appropriate role models, and generous mentor support.

STEP 2. Train the Trainers. Every pre-service K-8 teacher at USF participates in AIM@AMRoC. To date, we have trained 88 teachers, with a 60% minority participation rate in the program and nearly 90% female participation. We have also trained 44 computer science teachers.

The target population we're serving is Tampa Bay residents, particularly those in our high-needs University/Uptown area,  who are interested in learning STEAM career skills, and youth starting at age 8 years old who wouldn't otherwise have access to STEM education resources. 

The career fields in mechatronics, infrastructure, supply chain, and cyber security are some of the most lucrative careers our nation will offer over the next 60 years.  New funding in workforce development funding is pumping $2 trillion into this effort, in the interest of the safety of our nation.  Our team that has come together under Strategic Partnership Agreements with FCDI has all been working on this solution individually in our community for over a decade. We know this is an enormous opportunity to enhance, expand and diversify the technical workforce, but it requires successful mentors that have punched through the glass ceiling to implement and scale a program of this nature. 

Exploring AI Technology with Dr. Ora Tanner during our MakerCon eventHere students can experience real hands-on learning, earn micro-credentials with a portfolio of skills, and receive community, state, and national recognition for their work. Then they learn how to get career certifications, take dual enrollment classes, attend extension STEAM Career ConnectED programming we offer throughout the country, and how to find the right path for their future: trade or traditional education. 

Our organization is led by a large group of individuals who have found ways around and over gatekeepers who traditionally limit opportunities for underrepresented groups. We have been connected to organizations that have received funding but failed to allocate it to the participants it was designed to serve, and we are determined to break this cycle in visible and impactful ways.

With new lines for funding - almost $2 trillion in workforce development funds specific to infrastructure and supply chains becoming available - there will be a renewed rush of people into the STEM learning space who are less motivated in solving Gender Equity challenges in STEM fields than in obtaining funding, just as we've seen in the past.  

Ms Jackson is a former Hillsborough County educator.

We are revitalizing the way our local community does certification for STEM training based on feedback from our Career ConnectED mentors, from Northrup Grumman, CAE, Dell, and SOFWERX.  One of our lead mentors works for CAE, an engineering company that manufactures flight simulators and training devices for airlines, and aircraft manufacturers. He explained they volunteer here with our robotics and STEAM programs because the students working through our programs have real hands-on skills and do not need retraining. They get interns every year from local high schools and community colleges who have certifications, but who have never used the programs or tools required to do their jobs, despite the certifications. 

AMRoC Fab Lab, based in an underutilized urban mall on a public transit line, was built to provide solutions to these challenges.  There are empty storefronts in every community that could recreate our physical space and provide similarly accessible, inclusive learning spaces.  

Over the next year we seek to move from one AIM goal to four, and then to eight, over the next five years. [expanding this section]

Theresa Willingham, of FCDI, will oversee the program using her 15 years of experience in implementing competitive robotics throughout Florida, plus her experience in managing Florida Department of Education and Department of Economic Opportunity funding for workforce development in STEM.  She will lead the development and monitoring of benchmark achievements in the AIM program, collaboratively with other team members, to provide continual assessment of the effectiveness of the program. 

 Brandy Jackson will manage the virtual curriculum development team and oversee the implementation of the program into the Scoutlier learning platform. As an experienced STEM teacher and CEO, she will support FCDI staff to scaffold each AIM Micro Credentialing program as the digital lessons and collaboration experiential learning program, on Scoutlier.  Together they will continue to collaborate as a strategic partnership ecosystem, maintaining the 4 programs already in development and expanding to additional Micro Credentialing programs as we bring in more career-connected Mentors. 

The advisory board will review the curriculum yearly to ensure continual alignment with the state’s Next Generation Science Standards, connections to workforce goals in industry and workforce development programs in our area, and continue to monitor innovations so there remains a direct correlation to the mechatronics requirements for certification under the PPMI certification. The development team will receive advice and recommendations from FHTC and FIHF mentors on how to include DEI personnel to support all participants' needs.

Simone Brookins Jenkins, Ph. D. and an advisory team will evaluate program progress and suggest improvements through these goals and metrics.1) As determined by a Mechatronics STEM careers, particularly among underserved subgroups. 2) As determined by progress in attaining micro-credentials, more students, particularly underserved subgroups, will become aware of career pathways developed through the earning of certifications.

The mission of AIM@AMRoC is to bridge the race and gender equity gap by creating a fully scalable and sustainable model for workforce development strategies that starts as young as 8 years old and follows participants to STEM careers as adults, while also training formal and informal educators

The AIM at AMRoC Theory of Change is based on the documented premise that 1) underserved youth, particularly women and BIPOC lack access to the Tampa STEM ecosystem and related resources, 2) the majority of area STEM programs cater almost exclusively to youth with adult support who have transportation and financial support and 3)school-based certifications overwhelmingly lack any hands-on skills development.

AIM maps hands-on programs to STEM Certifications, provides lending libraries of resource materials, training programs for teachers, volunteer programs for high school-aged youth, and afterschool programs.

Participating youth participate in weekly workshops, have access to a generous mentor pool for support and guidance, can be part of competitive robotics teams, have the opportunity to manufacture actual products, and can develop a portfolio of skills-based learning with micro-credentials to show STEM skills growth.

In the short term, participants will gain an understanding of what it takes to be successful in a STEAM career, an understanding of challenges, and why having a network makes it easier to succeed and have access to a network of Career ConnectED Mentors.

In the long term,  our goal is to have sustainable funding in place so that AIM at AMRoC can be replicated in other spaces, ensure that micro-credentials are recognized outside FL, have consistent referrals from previous youth participants and continually grow our career-connected mentor community.

See our Theory of Change chart for more comprehensive details. 

We will be using Scoutlier, an online learning management platform, to make all programming freely accessible to youth and teachers everywhere. 

Additionally, AMRoC Fab Lab is a technology showcase facility, with 3D printers, laser cutters, CNC machines, computer labs for programming and CAD design and experienced technology professionals who help program participants gain real world knowledge, understanding and hands on skills for using these technologies in meaningful and economically powerful and sustainable ways. 

Two full-time staff, one part-time staff, four contracted program providers,  and over 30 active mentors and Career ConnectED mentors who interact with our participants and are part of the virtual curriculum being developed, as well as 3 unpaid advisors who help the program align with k12 educational standards and Department of Education standards for certification and micro-credentialing programs.

As separate entities, each of us have been working on this solution for over a decade. We came together to pilot this solution 18 months ago, and are now diligently working to scale it into the community.

AIM@AMRoC is equitable because of where we chose- intentionally- to build our physical space, in a mostly abandoned mall within walking distance of a University on a public transit line in the 7th largest school district in the US, in an area of high poverty. 

These programs are now the foundation for the AIM@AMRoC Microdentialing program and through Jamie’s connection at USF and Brandy’s connections we train a large number of educators. Those we cannot directly train have free access to our curriculum through Scoutlier.com. We offer one female-only STEM program each year at AMRoC, with everything else available to all who live in our very diverse community.  By being female-led, we demonstrate success is possible if you work together.

Our program is a sustainable program with several revenue streams. Our youth programs and community outreach programs have long-running sponsors that have made them sustainable through events like ROBOTICON, the STEAM Roadshow at the Florida State Fair, and Gulf Coast MakerCon, all community-based events that raise awareness of AMRoC programs. As we are a strategic partnership ecosystem, we work in convergence with USF, an educational research entity, and the Florida High Tech Corridor to continually seek grant funding for innovation in STEM educational opportunities. 

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Our program is a sustainable program it has several revenue streams. Our youth programs and community outreach programs have long-running sponsors that have made them sustainable through events like ROBOTICON, the STEAMFest Roadshow at the Florida State Fair, and Gulf Coast MakerCon, all community-based events that raise awareness of AMRoC programs. As we are a strategic partnership ecosystem, we work in convergence with USF, an educational research entity, and the Florida High Tech Corridor to continually seek grant funding for innovation in STEM educational opportunities. 

Additionally, our youth-based programs have separate funding channels. The youth participants run camps during the summer and also develop and manufacture their own products that are sold to our local community.  This is one of the micro-credentialing programs in the AIM@AMRoC offering, with students using skills in Illustrator and Photoshop to create digital art and then manufacture it in the AMRoC Fab Lab, utilizing skills to prove they have the certifications and profiting from it by making actual products.

Through the recent convergence and Career ConnectED learning programs that are foundational to AIM@AMRoC we have been able to get interns from USF Honors College and the Hillsborough Career Workforce program at no cost to our program. 

As a strategic partnership program, our organizations have individually raised over $2.6 million in funding over the past 5 years for our programs collectively. This has come in the form of NSF grants in STEM Career workforce, DoD Funding for robotics and workforce development, and state funding allocations from the Department of Education and Economic Development to pilot the AIM Programs, Office of Naval Research Funding in underwater robotics and cyber security. 

Additionally, our partners Aecern Learning and Scoutlier won the first-ever Catalyze Impact grant as our first strategic partnership and convergent learning project.