Partnerships for geospatial science in informal stem education

Technology Entrepreneur Center, Inc. received a $150,000 Project Grant from the National Science Foundation's Division of Research on Learning in Formal and Informal Settings under the STEM Education program (CFDA 47.076), awarded September 15, 2025, with completion targeted for February 28, 2027. The award funds a partnership development and planning initiative to establish a coalition of geospatial innovation organizations across public, private, and governmental sectors in the Greater St. Louis region. The primary deliverables include a comprehensive white paper documenting regional expertise gaps in geospatial science within informal STEM education, lessons learned from the coalition development process, an implementation framework for collaboration evaluation and improvement, and actionable recommendations for integrating geospatial science into informal learning environments.

The project advances the Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) program's objectives by fostering cross-sector collaboration and knowledge-sharing to address silos in informal science education. Beyond direct benefits to the Greater St. Louis community, the initiative is designed to produce nationally applicable guidance that will inform similar partnership efforts across the United States. The coalition's long-term vision includes designing and implementing a transferable geospatial science curriculum for nationwide adaptation, ultimately strengthening youth engagement in STEM through out-of-classroom learning experiences that cultivate interests in both personal development and career pathways.

Abstract

This project seeks to create a coalition of geospatial innovation organizations across all sectors of society (public, private, and governmental) to explore how spatial science can be more fully represented in offerings of informal stem education in the greater ST. Louis region. The coalition seeks to identify gaps, remove silos, and enable better collaboration, knowledge- and resource-sharing. By establishing shared goals, partnership building, and decision-making processes, the coalition will identify expertise and gaps in the region and share these findings in the form of a white paper. The informal stem learning field will be advanced through the development of a white paper focused on geospatial science as well as a discussion of the frameworks guiding partnership development. As such, the white paper will include lessons learned throughout the process, including implementation of collaboration evaluation and improvement framework, and recommendations for implementing geospatial science specifically in informal environments. The project should benefit the greater ST. Louis community, as well as inform and advise other groups across the nation that endeavor to create similar partnerships. The long-term vision for next steps for the coalition is to design, develop, and implement a geospatial science curriculum that can be shared and adapted for communities across the nation. Cultivating youths? Interests in stem in an environment outside of the classroom sets them up for a future in stem, whether for personal interest or for a career and provides a tremendous benefit to both local communities and to society at large. This partnership development & planning project is funded by the advancing informal stem learning (aisl) program, which seeks to advance new approaches to, and evidence-based understanding of, the design and development of stem learning in informal environments. This includes providing everyone multiple pathways for accessing and engaging in stem learning experiences. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.- subawards are planned for this award.