Bridging the Gap: Partnering for Equitable Access to Futures in STEM

Our workshop gives a window into an innovative tri-party collaboration between a school district, university and nonprofit designed to address gaps in access for kids to game-changing opportunities to learn, love and consider futures in STEM fields. The program, called Beyond Possible, is an afterschool community-based dual enrollment program for high school students designed to develop STEM and durable skills and position young people to enter in-demand careers leading to economic mobility. In this session, participants will walk through the development journey of this partnership, examine data sets to pinpoint crucial issues of equity, engage in community asset mapping to identify strong values-driven collaborations and gain perspective from lessons learned by the partners as they built and adjusted the innovative partnership.  Through the process, participants will have the opportunity to engage with others, apply the thinking protocols to their own challenges and bring curiosity and planning focus to dilemmas of equity in their own contexts.