The PA3 region student stem project is a partnership program coordinated by the chester county intermediate unit with 18 public school districts, two statewide cyber charter schools and 4 universities…

The PA3 region student stem project is a partnership program coordinated by the chester county intermediate unit with 18 public school districts, two statewide cyber charter schools and 4 universities and colleges- immaculata university, bucknell university, lycoming college and university of pittsburgh at greensburg. NASA- goddard space flight center has been a partner for our MSP grant and would support grant activities with this extension of our project through the summer of innovation project. Our project will work in conjunction with our current math and science partnership grant which included the same partners and has 240 grade 4- 12 teachers. The project will occur in the summer in our 18 public school districts, 2 charter schools, and several nonpublic schools within the boundaries of the 18 public school districts. Our teachers will be trained at our 40 hour summer institute held at immaculata university and the 3 day training sessions held at goddard space flight center. This project will involve at least 150 grade 4-9 teachers and 2400 grade 4-9 students per project year. Student will receive a minimum of 40 hours of summer program and 25 hours of curriculum content from project teachers during each school year. The summer camps goals will include: (1)to increase student content knowledge of define stem content for the year, (2) to introduce students to stem content through exploration of NASA missions: year one will focus on solar system focused missions, (3) to motivate students to pursue stem related careers through the study of stem subject areas in k-12 school and at the college and university level.(4) to develop the capacity of project school districts to support an integrated summer and school year stem curriculum for their students.each summer camp will include 20 students per teacher participant. Each participating district from across pennsylvania will host a one week- 40 hour summer camp. Content will come from NASA and our partners and will be coordinated by regional grant coordinators in each region of the state- east, central and west. Camps will be hands on and will also include the MSP grant s geodome and two star lab planetariums. In addition students involved in the project will participate in two NASA mission focused instructional units during the following school year. These units would be taught by our MSP and SOI grant teachers back in their home school districts. Project evaluation will include pre/post content assessments focusing on summer workshop and instructional unit content. There will also be a student and parent survey of student attitudes pre and post.national grant assessment and demographics will be coordinated by our project evaluator DR KIP bollinger. Control schools will be used to compare results. The significance of the project is to demonstrate a structured and well-assessed student stem instructional project focusing on nasastem content and increasing student motivation to stem study and careers. In addition the development of the capacity of local school districts to fiscally and operationally support a integrated stem summer and school year program.