Episode 29 Part 1: Building STEM Pathways: Connecting Youth, Education, and Industry
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[00:00:04] Michael Donovan: Welcome to the Evidence to Impact podcast, the podcast that brings together academics and their research partners to talk about insights and real-world policy solutions in Pennsylvania and beyond. I'm Michael Donovan, the associate director of the Evidence to Impact Collaborative here at Penn State. This is the first part of our two-part episode where we'll be discussing building STEM pathways, connecting youth, education, and industry. My guests today are Dale Kashishian, founder and CEO of Health Works Academies, and David Garbe, director of the McKinney Center for STEM Education at the Philadelphia Education Fund. 

[00:00:41] Dale Keshishian: Good morning. Thank you for having me. I started HealthWorks academies. Uh, we're a nonprofit organization to close the gap between STEM perception and careers in the health sciences. We were so wonderful, smart, talented students not persisting in STEM because they didn't know what to do with it after they were out of high school. And yet, industry has extraordinary opportunity, growth and challenges , and the need for workforce. So  health Works Academies was designed to inform students of various careers, various levels of education  across industries, clinical medicine, biopharma, medical devices, healthcare, technology, and behavioral health.

[00:01:28] Michael Donovan: Excellent. And David? 

[00:01:32] David Garbe: Hi Michael. Thanks for having me here today. David Garvey as you mentioned, the director of the McKinney Center for STEM Education. I come from a life science background myself. I was trained as a scientist  and did over 15 years of biomedical research. And  about 10 years ago, I decided to stop doing the science, to talk about the science  and joined a nonprofit, statewide nonprofit that does science outreach. And it became, quickly apparent to me that there's a lot of gaps in between education and the workforce. There's a lot of gaps in disconnect between how students see themselves and how they see the opportunities in STEM after high school. So started doing that work for about nine years, and about 15 months ago joined the McKinney Center at the Philadelphia Education Fund to really focus this work in Philadelphia and hopefully do some systems level change work to identify these gaps and hopefully change them for our young people.

[00:02:33] Michael Donovan: It's such a pleasure to have you both here today, and I'm really excited about the conversation. I did want to kind of set it up both of your organizations are working to close the gap between what's happening in the classroom and the education field and then pathways into the workforce or other ways we'll talk about post-secondary success in different ways. So where do your approaches align? Where do they differ? What's the disconnect or difference? 

[00:02:58] Dale Keshishian: I would like to say that  for HealthWorks academies we were for a very long time a high school to college pathway program. So , our industries and , our careers focused on college degree and postgraduate degrees. And we've since had a pivot because what we've seen is a real disconnect between what students are doing in, in high school and and those that are not going to college or not going into the trades and a, and an opportunity there. And, and so that has shifted our focus to how do we address STEM education  employment and continuing education for those students who tend to be disconnected once they graduate from high school.

[00:03:46] David Garbe: Yeah, thanks Dale. I think the Philadelphia Education Fund for the past 40 years, we are celebrating our 40th anniversary this year. They've been focused on post-secondary success more broadly with a, with an eye , on college attainment. But we realize that workforce is equally important and there's not just one pathway to obtain post-secondary success. You can go into the workforce and stay there. You can go into workforce and go back to higher education if needed. And, and if so, desired. So, so really focusing on those opportunity gaps. And I think where Dale and I really align is around the idea that our young people, they truly need authentic learning experiences that are directly tied to both of those pathways. And they need to see both of those pathways as an option. And I think Dale would agree with me , that, you know, I think another place where we both agree is that our efforts need to be focused on equity. Uh, a diverse workforce is a better workforce. A diverse post-secondary attainment is a better post-secondary attainment. And our young people need to see themselves in these roles and their lived experiences are important and how that leads to and helps steer future stem innovation.

[00:05:01] Michael Donovan: I love your characterization of authentic engagement, you know, really trying to  get to students in their own experience. I want to tease out a little bit further that, healthcare academies, from what you mentioned, Dale has a focus primarily on healthcare oriented pathways while the Philadelphia Education Fund has supported broader STEM ecosystems. What ways do these again, overlap and have some good complementarity as well to better serve students? 

[00:05:30] Dale Keshishian: Well, I think that the Philadelphia Education Fund does an amazing job with preparing students for post-secondary education, whatever that looks like. And that's critically, that foundation is critically important in high school. They don't get it anywhere else. And so these so you know these, this education , is critically important for what's next. I think that  focusing on the health sciences you know, we are in Pennsylvania. You know, we have extraordinary opportunity in healthcare, whether it's clinical medicine, pharma devices, technology, behavioral health, um, and all the support services that serve those industries that are also STEM careers. I mean, we could, when we look from that lens, we're talking about thousands of careers. And so preparing students in high school for post-secondary success, whatever that looks like, and giving proximity to industry and career awareness, complement each other very well. 

[00:06:31] David Garbe: and I'll just add that, you know, I think we need to be transparent. Funding is tough these days. Like trying to fundraise for programs, sustain and maintain programs that can be challenging. So we're trying not to compete. We're trying to see where there is direct overlap and alignment. And how can the McKinney Center help a project like, like Dale's at HealthWorks Academy spearhead something that's gonna benefit all youth in Philadelphia even though they're just taking, you know, a more health science focused approach versus a broader stem. But as, as Dale mentioned, you know, there are so many other opportunities within STEM more broadly that, that then come back to those health sciences and it on that point of, and I think Dale and I use this tagline often, Dale, I hope you don't mind me saying it, but it's collaboration over competition. And I love having thought partners like Dale at the table who are. Creating pathways for post-secondary success and really our forward thinking, uh, and asking how can we change systems to make these opportunities more available for our young people?

[00:07:39] Michael Donovan: Well, and those young people are benefiting from that view towards it as complementarity and trying to grow the pie versus compete for smaller slices. I, do wanna frame this , in a positive orientation, but. We did talk at the beginning a little bit about challenges around youth engagement, particularly in, in STEM   and health related fields , as a portion of that. How do you really design programs to keep students engaged over time. And, with all of the attention grabbing realities of life these days, how do we keep them motivated to be a part of this? 

[00:08:14] Dale Keshishian: I think I'd like to kick off that question. I think we are in an age where it is, increasingly difficult to  foster students' attention with, you know, with phones and gaming and all the distractions that, that they're faced with now. It's a very different landscape for teachers to try and, and keep students engaged. But what I think I think there are several things that we can do. First of all, creating awareness of what STEM looks like. You know, we talk about individual classes you know, science, math, technology, engineering, but how does this play out in the real world? What is the application? And I think that needs to be embedded in education. I think there needs to be a belief that students of all backgrounds belong. In these roles. You know, we see, especially among girls, we see, um, oh, I could never be a scientist, or I could never be a doctor  until they meet somebody who grew up just like they did, who looks like them and suddenly that perception becomes a reality. And they shrug it off in a second. You know, you have to capture that before they say, no, I can't do that. So I think that proximity is really important . And,, fostering role models, fostering mentors, fostering resources for students of all backgrounds to see themselves in these roles. That's step one. And I think step two is breaking down the silos. So we have, you know, high school education, we have post-secondary education, and we have industry and we need to flatten that out so that students have access to know, what post-secondary education looks like in all of its forms and all of its options and and what industry looks like. And I think too, learning by doing. I think   we can talk some more about this, but really engaging students in doing the science, doing the math, doing the technology. Unfortunately, I go into schools   particularly , in the city where they don't have a science lab, so if they don't have a science lab, how can they learn science and and what, what organizations are doing to close those gaps. And again, you know, we go back to intermediaries, the who come in  with alternative resources. But we need to be thinking from the end in mind and how do we flatten those silos so that students have a better understanding of what the opportunities are and quite frankly the excitement.

[00:11:04] David Garbe: Yeah, thanks Dale. I can't agree more. And to kind of piggyback on, on her answer there's a lot to unpack, but I'll try to do it as succinctly as possible. The role model piece, having youth be able to see themselves in these roles is critically important. You know similar studies have been done across the past 30 years or so, where you can ask, an elementary student to draw what, for example, a scientist looks like. And 30 years ago, less than 1% of students would draw a female in that role or a person of color in that role. This study was done in 2015 again, or a similar study again was done and it was up to 30% of students. But that's still not good enough. And I would do this in some of my work, in my former role, where I would go into the classroom directly and I would start off and ask, draw what a scientist looks like. And you would still be amazed on how many people just draw what appear to be old white dudes in lab coats because that's what they still see. So we need that better representation, those, those role models. For the students I would also add that, you know, I think in order to, to maintain engagement, we need to show our young people how STEM connects to their everyday lives. It is not just in the science labs and, and you know, in the hospitals, it's their phones, it's videos, it's YouTube, it's cooking. It's. Shopping and understanding sales tax. It's connecting those experience to real world economic mobility opportunities, right? And showing that these, this is how you move the needle and impact generational wealth. And I think, you know, important piece that I hope to get to maybe a little bit later that I don't think has been brought up yet, but I do think maintaining identity is not just left to the students. That it, it also needs to be community engagement, community understanding and getting the not just the industry partners to the table and the, and the kids to the table, but getting the communities, the community partners to the table to, to really steer the ship here. And Michael, finally, I don't want to take up too much time here, but to get back to your original question, um, I think it's also important to provide students and our young people with quality hands-on experiences. So the McKinney Center has a direct student-facing program called Ignite STEM. And what we try to do in Ignite STEM is to really drive home these hands-on authentic learning experiences to give our young people, um, an opportunity to experience, uh, what a real-world opportunity, professional opportunity could look like. So we do this through hands-on activities, uh, during the school year once a week in our cohort models. We do it a little bit more frequently in the summertime. And we also give them the durable skills, uh, the training and those life skills in asynchronous online, uh, activities and hands-on or, or minds-on conversations throughout the week as well. So all of those things combined, I think really, uh, will help to draw students towards those hands-on learning opportunities away from all those competing factors, hopefully, and at least give them a time, a dedicated time to embrace and experience what career training and hands-on learning looks like.

[00:13:16] Michael Donovan: So I'm really seeing that, focusing on the opportunity for the students to be able to see themselves in a future in pathway or  on opportunity for them  is crucial. Being authentic , in that effort as well  is really vital. And, while there is, you know  the delivery of curriculum , in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics , as STEM is, you know, how do we go the step further to really understand the different roles? Dale noted on this earlier how the, there's just been an explosion of job types from  am mere 20, 30 years ago especially. There are also exigent realities that we're, as a population getting older and there are  more opportunities for intervention to improve lives through, through medical and behavioral efforts. And these students also just went through a global pandemic and they're seeing the real  heroism that comes through  , work in healthcare and prioritizing improving others' lives. You talk already, David, about. Making it real beyond the classroom. Anything more on, on how we do that?

[00:14:23] David Garbe: I think one of the first things that, that I think we should also acknowledge that, as we've talked about already, there are many different career opportunities in stem and we need to acknowledge that not every student may be destined for one reason or another for higher education. So how can we communicate these opportunities at multiple levels? So if you wanna, if you feel like your calling is to do X, then you might wanna do X in stem, right? , And create those pathways for the students to see. And those pathway maps need to be clear, engaging, informative, and not just some I just not another flyer that students receive, right. To really make them engaging. Again, I think Dale mentioned this before, but attention span is decreasing, right? So we need to figure out ways to connect with students where they're at. And is it through gamification of STEM pathways? Is it through, you know, some sort of 32nd clip on TikTok that's, it's in and out for students to see and learn from? So, yeah, I'll turn it over to Dale. 

[00:15:35] Dale Keshishian: I'd like to piggyback on that. David. Thank you. I think I had a great conversation this week with an educator trying to navigate health science careers and she said, remember in the old days before GPS when AAA had triptychs. And you would use the triptych to map out your route. Well, healthcare, career, health science, careers need a triptych. So what do those entry level careers look like? What do you look, you know, what do you know at different stages of education? How do you enter the field? How do you grow in the field? What are the entry points? What are the opportunities for advancement? And make that really clear to students. And it's a changing landscape for sure, but in the age of technology, we can do it. We just need to close the gap and create that triptych for educators and students to be able to see what the opportunities are. 

[00:16:39] David Garbe: Yeah, that's great Dale. And it made me think we need to do a better job of. Encouraging students to think about their pathway as a journey and not a linear road. You know, I think what do you wanna do with your future is probably, I've learned one of the worst questions that you might ask a kid, because it really puts them on this path that I have to get to this destination. And when I was doing my previous work, the one thing that, that I, over and over again, showcase to all different age groups, is my career journey and how it never looked like I envisioned it when I was in high school or coming out of high school. Even coming out of college, I thought I was gonna be a medical doctor, a physician, and instead I went down the science path. And I did science for 15 years. And then, I started dipping my toes into the nonprofit space and now I'm doing science outreach and systems change work. So it's really about the teaching them to adapt, teaching them to think critically and to use those skills in any. Job or any opportunity that they find themselves in.

[00:17:43] Michael Donovan: I can only imagine modeling that non-linearity is really vital for students to see, because there's a lot of pressure , to go through each path in life beyond just the career thinking of  the trajectory that their families put on them and , their cultures, their societies. So having that opportunity to turn the temperature down a little and recognize that there'll be jags to , the line is a, it's an , important piece. I want to talk a little bit about what do you all find to be the most valuable entry point for this work? , In terms of  a student's kind of developmental trajectory? You know  we've been talking kind of. Later on in life and in high school. But I wanna get specific on that. And , there's actually a lot of differences internationally around where students become more focused on their career trajectory. Many countries have even earlier than the us. And what are some value there, if you have any thoughts on that?

[00:18:40] David Garbe: Yeah, thanks. I think I'll jump in and start off this answer. There is data out there that shows that by the end of middle school is really where students begin to establish their STEM identity. Research from the National Science Foundation or NSF, these studies show that students begin forming attitudes about science and math in elementary school. And these beliefs really become more concrete through middle school and into high school. So we need to  do a better job of at least. Starting to expose students and helping them understand the opportunities. You know, I don't, I'm not expecting a fourth grader to, to know how to become a life scientist down the road   but really starting to form those identities , and forming those attitudes towards math and science is critically important at a younger age. So that could be through classroom speakers training a professional to really come in at the, at an age level appropriate fashion , and engage the students and showcase what opportunities they can start to think about. And remember, STEM is, I mean, we call it stem, but STEM is four acronyms. And if you look at other places, it's steam, or it's STEM with two mss because you're not just math at the end. You include medical at the end. So. It's really trying to expose them to this broad array of opportunities which is sadly in some cases just being called STEM these days. 

[00:20:13] Dale Keshishian: I would like to piggyback on that as well, I, I think hands-on experience from all stages of education are really important. STEM is an, you know, to David's point is an acronym, but, it really goes back to just learning, having students with hands-on experience, learning something, getting involved, getting their hands dirty and and really enjoying the experience. We didn't have STEM education when I was growing up. That wasn't an acronym, but I remember planting a potato and and going out and watering it and. Harvesting all these potatoes and serving them for dinner. That was magical to me. I remember my second grade teacher with a tray of water and putting a chunk of potassium on it and watching it fly across the surface of the water. And it was incredible. And  those experiences  stayed with me all those years. And I think when we create an acronym, it diminishes the power of student experience when they get to actually see it, do it, experience it, and then sustain it over time. 

[00:21:36] David Garbe: And I'll also add that you know, I don't think it, something I don't think our education system does enough is to. Teach students that failure is an option, right? We're so focused on regurgitating information, taking tests, but allowing students to fail and having them wrestle with that and having them then go back and adapt their thought process based on their, those learnings. Failure is just as good as success oftentimes in, in the STEM fields. So allowing them to fail, allowing them to explore, as Dale said, with those hands-on experiences is critically important and it will develop those critical analysis skills, the critical thinking, the problem solving skills that we so desperately need.

[00:22:25] Michael Donovan: I think that, to date, we've been talking a little bit really focused on. Kind of curricular innovations aimed at the student. I want to pivot a little bit and think about the training required to update our teaching core. There are over 500 school districts in Pennsylvania alone thousands and thousands of public employees across  the country. Our frontline teachers, classroom teachers and support staff and teachers specialists in different ways. What are the mechanisms for really conveying this, the texture that you all , are pulling out to them  how do we do this in continuing education models? How do we get this into their training for the next generation of students coming out of  teaching colleges, for example  or teacher programs, education programs. I wonder if you have some ideas there. 

[00:23:19] Dale Keshishian: We have a lot to learn from our career in technical education schools. You know, when they're training students   for the trades, they have trades people from industry teaching those courses. And so they're directly connected to industry, with industry experience and fostering that next generation of talent. And I think we have so much that we can learn from that career connected learning. I think industry has a role , in STEM education. I think you know, we can't expect for industry to hire students aligned with industry and just land on their doorstep if they're not connected to fostering education. I, so I think there's a role for K 12 education. I think there's a role for post-secondary education. I think there's a role for continuing education for industry where our post-secondary education is aligned with opportunities to train people for upward mobility once they're in companies. So again, breaking down those silos and working back and forth  to support everybody's upward mobility. I'll go back to what we did with our panels. We hosted industry panels where folks would talk about their academic  journey, their  what was your almost certain future in high school. And it was incredibly illuminating and every story was different. And then their career journey. So the goal was to introduce students of all backgrounds to careers in these industries. And pathways, and the stories about how they achieve them. But at the same time, the teachers came away with so much insight from learning from these industry panelists in a 90 minute program. Our focus was students. But the added benefit was that the teachers walked away and the administrators and we had people who were not teachers, they were administrators who dialed in for the programs because they wanted to learn. And it turned out to be a magnified effect.

[00:25:36] David Garbe: I think we also have to acknowledge as part of the conversation that the teacher profession is in dire straits right now. We are losing teachers. We are not feeding teachers into the pipeline. And that's for a myriad of reasons, and that's beyond the conversation that we're having today. But we do need to acknowledge that we need to do a better job of probably figuring out strategies to better prepare our pre-service teachers to enter into the STEM classrooms. But also we need to acknowledge that we need to do ongoing PD for current staff members. And that could look like professional learning for educators in collaboration with our industry partners. It could be offering our educators real world learning experience, paid learning experiences over the summer so they can bring that information  those experiences back to their students, right? Training one teacher can have an impact on over a hundred students. So you're seeing , a synergistic  effect of those partnerships. And one of the things more recently that one of the initiatives from the Bikini Center for STEM Education called the Philadelphia STEM Equity Collective, or psec is working towards, is we were doing a landscape analysis of kind of math preparation and what does it look like to get more students computational ready with a mathematical awareness by eighth grade, right? Really prepping them for algebra in high school. And we did a landscape analysis. We didn't just talk to teachers, but we talked to policy makers. We talked to informal science educators. We did talk to teachers, we talked to curriculum specialists. We talked to probably over 10 or 15 cross-sector partners. And one of the things that was almost consistent, no matter who you talk to, is that we need to change the narrative for not just students. I assume the narrative needed to change for students. We gotta encourage students that math is for them, that math , is in our everyday lives. But what we heard is we actually need to change the narratives for educators as well. There are so many educators that, that think, oh, I don't know. I don't know enough about math. I don't , know enough about science. I don't consider myself an expert in those fields. We need to change that. We need to showcase that those teachers can do this work. And it starts at the level of the educator as well, and they're gonna influence the students and how the students see themselves. So I think that needs to be a piece of the conversation as well. 

[00:28:10] Dale Keshishian: I agree. And I'd like to add something that we typically don't think of. We think of K 12 education, post-secondary education in industry as silos as I mentioned. But I would like to have teachers rethink high school graduation. We look at we all even as parents  our high schools  students gonna graduate from high school, you know, really excited. And we think of that as an endpoint as opposed to a starting line. And when we relate to it as a starting line, there's an urgency for educators. To prepare students for what's next. Organizations like the Philadelphia Education Fund do a great job preparing students for college, but I think generally we look, need to look at all students and think of when we think of education as the starting line, what are we starting them for? And then how do we best position them for what's next when they're not under our purview anymore?

[00:29:19] Michael Donovan: This is a really rich discussion. I have a couple thoughts I wanted , to chime in on. One is  really getting at the challenge of the teaching community , as you pointed out, David, you know, that gets to your point earlier about ensuring that students can see themselves in a pathway that so having a diverse teacher corps is really vital for a diverse student body to understand and where they can see themselves in different careers. I also was really thinking about the economic benefits of strengthening the connective tissue between the workforce not just in terms of. Ensuring that students come to the workforce whether they go into college , or straight out of high school with the skills and competencies that they require but they have the desire and the drive to really be there. They're good fits. They recognize that they're pursuing this instead of falling into it. I think that's , a really vital piece. But one question I do have is, while strengthening the connective tissue, as I say, between industry or the workforce or  the job market is vital, are there sacrifices that have to be made in terms of the broader learning goals for students? You think of the traditional liberal arts education , in higher education. We're preparing students to be. Citizens not just , members of a workforce. I just want to , pull at that a little bit.

[00:30:48] Dale Keshishian: I would like to say that I don't think it's an either or. I think if we look traditionally you know, 40 years ago people went to college for a job. So if you were going to be an engineer, you went to college to become an engineer, you knew what career you were going into. And there was a shift that indicated that    your child will make a million dollars more in your lifetime if they have a college degree, right? And so everybody was sending their students to college, but the question was, what are they going to college for? And they really didn't know. So they'd go into college undeclared, try to figure it out while they were there. And they would either graduate with a liberal arts degree or they'd cram all their  mandatory courses into years three and four, sometimes five and six to get a bachelor's degree. But you know, it's not really , a roadmap. And students were not adequately informed. About their career path. I think there's certainly a role in liberal arts. But I think we need to do a better job if students , are going into post-secondary education, taking on debt that that they have a clear path of what's, what the requirements are, what the opportunities are, where the job growth is, and where the upward mobility is. It's a little bit like, I like the Wayne Gretzky model. When asked how he scored so many points, he said, I skated to where the puck was going. I think that in education we can learn a lot from that model and educating students about where the puck is going in terms of, you know, where is industry growing, where are the opportunities, where are the careers that are going to be in demand, and how does STEM education prepare them with post-secondary access , and pathways regardless of where their degree is, whether it's a certificate or, a postdoctoral, education that they have a path. And then once they're in industry it's very different from high school. They see opportunities, they rub shoulders with, with people in the field who look like them, who have the same academic proficiency and think I could do that job. And so, I think the idea of continuing education and upward mobility is a lifelong pursuit. And, you know, if you can't see it, you can't be it. So , I think, it's really critically important that we step back , and look at the bigger picture , and offer that opportunity to students and teachers. 

[00:33:40] David Garbe: Yeah. Thank you Dale. I'll just add that liberal arts education is important. It, you know, I think it does add value just beyond a particular skillset that you might need for a job. But there's other ways to skin that cat  if you will  you know, we could teach durable skills. Life skills, there's so many names for those skills. We can teach those things in parallel. So students and our young people are not just getting the information they need to be successful in a particular job or role, but they are becoming better citizens. They are learning how to communicate. They are learning how to put down their phones , and focus on a task at hand. So all of those things will make a more well-rounded citizen. Michael, to get back to your question, I also think , there is, you know, an inherent issue here with the amount of information and data that we try to cram into curriculum these days. We have to realize that, you know, our information pool is only growing exponentially. It's not getting any smaller. So. We can't cram all that information in. So how do we teach students to not just learn definitions , and, the inside of the cell components, for example, but how to really critically think and go find that information and use that information themselves. And I don't know if we'll have a chance to touch on this a little bit later, but I, we have to acknowledge that we've all had information, endless information at our fingertips through the internet for the past 30 years. But with the onset of artificial intelligence and ai those learning opportunities are just becoming that much more intense. And we can use the technology to benefit what we do, benefit our learning, benefit our jobs  and the work that we do and educating students on how to best utilize that resource and that new technology is critical.

[00:35:43] Michael Donovan: I would absolutely love to, to chat more on, on the inflection point that we are in and what that means for these students and the next students behind them , and their workforce decisions. But I would love to continue that as well. I did want to draw back to one thing you mentioned there about  the  propensity to pile on more and more in a classroom , and a student's day. And we ultimately are exist in an environment of scarcity, right? So there's only so many minutes of classroom instructional time. There's only so many resources to go around. So how do we do this at scale? How do we. Get this to be spread across those 500 plus school districts in Pennsylvania. So, you know, to do that, we have to really maximize impact with , the limited resources available. I wonder if there are any thoughts on that. This could be technological innovations as you pointed out, David. Ways can , we make this go further for less.

[00:36:41] David Garbe: I'm not sure there's a silver bullet it's using, for example, as we just talked about, technology and AI to potentially leverage this abundance of information we all try to digest and. It's not just a cheating tool in the classroom, right? We need to embrace it. This technology is here to stay. I was reading a book on it and that said, this is the worst the technology is ever gonna be. And if that's scary for a lot of people, guess what? It's only improving day  over day. I also think, we need to pay attention to what this looks like in local communities. So we talk about at scale, but really what does scale look like and how, what matters to , a Philadelphia young person or local communities is a lot different than what matters too. Somebody in central Pennsylvania. So how do we do this with intention to make it contextual given the local landscape across, not just here in Pennsylvania, but also across the nation. So again  there's not a silver bullet. And , I think the last thing I'll add is to help it grow at scale. And I said this before and I think we touched on this, but really getting the community and the families to understand the importance of STEM and the economic mobility opportunities is critical. 'Cause that's only going to help the support network to move this stuff forward.

[00:38:05] Dale Keshishian: David, you're absolutely right. The support network is critically important, and whether that looks like family or community or mentors or, you know, input from industry to support students, in a formalized setting could look a lot of different ways. But it's critically important that students are not trying to do this by themselves. I also think with regards to all of the information out there and resources and it really is, overwhelming. But I think for educators how we bring that to scale is focused on knowledge. So there's information, but then there's knowledge and that knowledge, discerns information because it's coming from so many different places and sometimes it's. And it's not good information. And so if you don't have the knowledge to be able to discern, it can be overwhelming and take you in the wrong direction. Just take AI for example. If you gather information from AI and you are not knowledgeable enough to be able to discern what's good information and what's not good information, you'll be believe anything, right? And so I think that to bring this to scale is to focus on what students need to know about these subjects and then how they source their information, how how they use that information and and then think about how to scale. But I think that knowledge piece is critically important.

[00:39:45] Michael Donovan: Thank you. I'm hearing  the importance for contextualization to local conditions, especially when thinking about reaching diverse populations I think that's vital and crucial. And Dale, to your point, really trying to, find signal through the noise on STEM education itself a bit. And we'll talk a little bit about how you both would in a perfect world redesign the field of STEM education in a moment. But I wanted to think about skills and competencies again, as well as the workforce changes as we've been noting quite a bit  as teams are often the platform for even stem based work. What durable skills like communication, social emotional learning, empathy  where are we falling short there, or where are we having successes? How would, how does that relate to the broader student goals of getting out a well-rounded human being at the end of the day, but also preparing themselves for a workforce where they're gonna have to work with other people. What are some of the things , we're seeing there?

[00:40:50] Dale Keshishian: One of the things that  we did that came through in our panels , and honestly, this was not intentional, but, it was captured, is when people shared their stories their ac their academic journey, their career journey communication, ownership of the whole commitment to excellence, teamwork, mentorship, sponsorship, allyship transferable skills were all highlighted in how people progressed in education and , in their job. You know, when they presented on the panels  they didn't just show up. And  fully formed from high school. And sharing that journey was incredibly illuminating. But  in addition to just the academic progression, those relationships, the communication, the teamwork, how they progressed through   a mentor or a sponsor. I mean, you know, many of us didn't know what a sponsor was or did until we were in industry, right? So these are, critically important. And the idea of transferable skills because you start in one place doesn't mean you leave all of your knowledge behind to do something else. And they talked about how they utilize transferable skills , in their current roles. And you know, you spoke about empathy , and if you're going into a healthcare field that's a competency that you must have. We had , a program with a group of eighth grade students in the inner city. And these were pretty tough kids. And  we did the marshmallow , towers with the straws and we did many iterations, but one of them was putting on safety glasses with Vaseline. And then, we did a debrief and it was amazing to see these tough kids who were challenged with not being able to see and in competition for building the tallest tower and what did they learn? And it was amazing to hear how sensitive they became. When their visual faculty was taken away.

[00:43:08] David Garbe: And Michael, I think you, you mentioned terms like social, emotional learning, trauma informed care. I think we need to be intentional about recognizing and not just recognizing, but honoring those lived experiences of our young people and our communities. And the vastly different that the, how vastly different those experiences can be and the huge role that they play in the learning experiences. I think we also have to acknowledge that for a long time, probably unintentionally, hopefully unintentionally you know, I think we do sometimes we think about doing our work too or for communities, but we need to reframe that and do the work with communities. Their voice, those lived experiences is what's gonna help move the needle and. Along those lines, I guess , I'll tell a quick story and it's actually fairly embarrassing, so , I hesitate sometimes telling this story, but I think , it speaks to the place of growth for me. When I transitioned out of science and started going into the classroom and I was talking about, as we mentioned before, the different pathways that are available and it's not a linear path to success, it can look quite a bit different as we go through the journey. I was outlining different stops along my journey, and in order to make this more visual , for students, I would put a picture up there. And I can tell you unintentionally, it became apparent to me after a sixth grader pointed that out, that all the photos that I was showing were those male dominated roles and the person was like. Dr. Garbe why isn't there a person that looks like me up there? And , it was 10 years ago and I still have to swallow my pride and say to that sixth grader, thank you for showing me unintentionally what I was doing. So acknowledging that, again  getting back to that representation piece and how important these lived experiences are for our young people and their families and the communities in which they live. Critically important.

[00:45:12] Michael Donovan: And that's a wrap for part one of our two-part episode on building STEM pathways, connecting youth, education, and industry. We just had way too much great content to fit in one episode. My guests today were Dale Kashishian, founder and CEO of Health Works Academies, and David Garbe, director of the McKinney Center for STEM Education at the Philadelphia Education Fund. Please join us for part two coming up.