Closing the STEM Gap: ECU’s Innovative Program for Teachers and Students

May 7, 2025 by Daniel Castaneda

Economic Development Workforce Development

By: Sunnie Dawn Baker

STEM (Science Technology Engineering and Math) is increasingly important in today’s world. Technology touches nearly every aspect of our lives and will continue to expand its influence in the future. However, to build a workforce that can thoroughly utilize STEM, we must educate them in it. For students to learn STEM effectively, they must have teachers who are confident with the material—a challenge that’s often underestimated. Teacher preparation programs often overlook these areas, so many educators lack the exposure they need to feel confident teaching STEM. However, a program at ECU aims to change that through an innovative summer camp for both educators and students.

In October 2024, the Augustus F. Hawkins Center of Excellence (Hawkins) Program awarded a grant to ECU in the amount of 3.1 million dollars over the course of five years. Jo Anna Owens, Coordinator for the Department of Education at ECU, wrote the grant and one of the priorities was for professional development or additional clinical experiences for future educators. She and the rest of the Hawkins Grant team—Sam Baker, the Resource Specialist and Betty Cruz, the Community Ambassador—realized that they could help close the gap in STEM education by hosting a camp at ECU. However, this is not a typical summer STEM camp for kids. It has a dual purpose of teaching kids STEM, but also teaching teachers how to teach STEM.

ECU will host the Curriculum Development Camp from July 8th through August 8^th. During this time, there will be seven paid internship opportunities, including housing in the dorms. Five of these are for pre-service education majors, which are education majors who have not yet begun their student teaching. The sixth opportunity is for a marketing student to document and create content. The final internship is for a graduate student going into administration to have practice overseeing the program. This program will give the participants a chance to develop and implement their own lesson plans, with the help and guidance of a curriculum specialist and ECU’s Institute for Math and Science Education’s Lending Library, directed by Dr. Darcy Tessman.

The Lending Library offers a unique resource to any licensed teacher in Oklahoma, providing equipment and accompanying lesson plans for everything from LEGO Robotics to Bots to Drones and Aerospace to KidWind. This partnership between the Lending Library and the Curriculum Development Camp not only makes the participants aware of this resource but also gives them a starting point to develop their own curriculum. They can discover what interests them the most, and what they think will interest their students, and use the lesson plans to begin their thought processes.

Though the teacher-participants arrive on campus in July 8^th, the students will be on campus for the day camp from July 28^th through the 31^st. It is a free day camp for students going into grades 3-5. The timing of the students’ arrival, however, allows the teachers to have three weeks before the STEM camp to prepare and then one week after to reflect on their experience to fully prepare them to teach STEM in the classroom.

While there are only seven openings in this program, the Hawkins Grant team are also partnering with Dr. Robin Roberson who runs three four-day STEM camps during the summer—The Human Water Cycle Academy—which she hosts at OU, Rose State College, and ECU, targeting students going into grades 8-12. While some education students might not have the time commitment to do the five-week Curriculum Development Camp, they can still participate in a paid internship, where they help facilitate these water science camps, teaching them how to teach STEM, but also do classroom management in a lab, which is very different from a traditional classroom.

These opportunities for educators are critical for the future of STEM education, especially at the elementary level where kids can start getting excited about these disciplines. However, Roberson says, “One of the hard parts with elementary teachers is that a lot of them are afraid of STEM because no one has exposed them to STEM. But when you take them to the lab and start doing experiments, they realize it is a lot of fun.” Beyond the lack of exposure, there are other reasons for anxiety surrounding STEM education. Owens says, “Teaching is already performance but with STEM, now they also have to perform a trick, so they are a magician as well as a performer. Giving these students this opportunity can make a difference in that.”

The Curriculum Development Camp is currently accepting applications for teachers. To learn more, contact Betty Cruz at betmcru@ecok.edu and for more information about the Human Water Cycle Academy contact robrrob@ecok.edu. These opportunities not only start young people into the STEM pipeline, but also develop our teacher workforce so they can prepare these students for the future ahead.