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Purdue takes early steps to create its own STEM pipeline

New charter school aims to help inner city students and other pupils get head starts on their careers in STEM.

stem-purdue-pipeline [1]

When it comes to developing young talent well in advance, the major league baseball system has the process down to a science. Using a “farm system” that cultivates and grooms youngsters for future positions on major league baseball teams, Major League Baseball (MLB) virtually ensures that as positions open up at the top, there is always a good crop of new recruits to select from. By taking a hands-on role in the farming process, MLB has set itself up as the ultimate developer of both high school and college-aged players.

Colleges and universities have traditionally relied on the nation’s high schools to serve as their farming systems, but at least one is taking a step outside of the box on the STEM front. Now, rather than hoping that a viable crop of young STEM students will enter its technical programs, Purdue University [2] in West Lafayette, Ind., will literally begin growing its own field of potential candidates.

Set to open in August 2017, Purdue Polytechnic Indianapolis High School will help bridge the gap for inner-city students who want to attend Purdue University. According to Gary R. Bertoline, dean of the Purdue Polytechnic Institute (formerly known as the Purdue College of Technology), the STEM-focused charter school will be located in downtown Indianapolis. It will offer a high school curriculum that mirrors that of Purdue Polytechnic Institute – with the goal of prepping students for success in STEM at the college level.

The new high school will offer open enrollment for a STEM-based curriculum in which the first two years will encompass problem- and project-based learning focused on science, technology, engineering, and mathematics with a connection between those subjects and real-world challenges.

Students entering 11th grade will select a specific pathway to master skills, earn college credit and industry credentials while learning in the high school classroom, at Purdue’s West Lafayette campus and in the workplace. In the 12th grade, students will complete an internship of their chosen pathway. As part of the program, Purdue also will provide programs that help students transition from high school to college and college-level courses.

(Next page: Purdue’s field of dreams funding and leadership)

Getting on track

To head up the new initiative, Purdue University formed a steering committee comprised of individuals from the university, the city of Indianapolis, USA Funds [3] (which provided a $500,000 planning grant), and EmployIndy.

According to Bertoline, key project objectives include offering an alternative learning environment that prepares students for today’s workplace and increasing the low number of Indianapolis Public School students who are qualified to succeed at Purdue University.

“This isn’t going to be a high school that selects the best and brightest students; we’re not trying to do that,” Bertoline points out. “We’re looking at the middle 50 percent of the student population, those that have fallen through the cracks, and/or those who aren’t in the right learning environments – but who are capable of more. Those are our sweet spots.” By taking aim at this segment of the student population, Bertoline says the charter high school will be able to “generate a much more diverse student body that, in turn, will matriculate right into Purdue University.”

Goal: Retain our STEM students

And if all goes as planned, a good portion of those students will buck the current STEM trend and actually stay in the programs that they were accepted into as freshmen. According to a National Center for Education Statistics’ (NCES) STEM Attrition: College Students’ Paths Into and Out of STEM Fields Statistical Analysis Report [4], about 28 percent of bachelor’s degree students and 20 percent of associate’s degree students entered a STEM field (i.e., they chose a STEM-related major) at some point within six years of entering postsecondary education in 2003−04. A total of 48 percent of bachelor’s degree students and 69 percent of associate’s degree students who entered STEM fields between 2003 and 2009 had left these fields by spring 2009.

Bertoline hopes that Purdue Polytechnic Indianapolis High School can help reduce the exodus of STEM majors while also opening doors for students who may not have ever considered a technical education/career in the first place.

“When I became dean of the college four years ago, I had a grand idea of creating an integrated STEM approach that would start at the K-12 level,” says Bertoline, who began working on the early stages of the new high school two years ago.

After getting the USA Funds planning grant, and working closely with Purdue University President Mitch Daniels, Bertoline and his team decided that creating a charter high school in downtown Indianapolis would be a good first step in the right direction. “The success rate of those inner-city students who were going on to college was a challenge that we wanted to take on,” says Bertoline. “In doing so, we’d be creating a pipeline directly to the university. That was a primary motivation for us.”

Spreading its wings

Once the new school opens in 2017, Bertoline says Purdue will look to expand the concept to other areas of Indiana. With eight polytechnic sites already established throughout the state, the university hopes to “spread support for K-12 STEM education to other areas,” says Bertoline. “We’re really just trying to make a difference here by tackling the issue of getting enough students interested in STEM at the K-12 level.”

As part of the program, Bertoline says the university is also developing a mediation program targeted at the middle-school population. “We know some of them won’t be ready for the math and science that will be taught at the high school level,” he explains, “so we’re going to reach out even further by involving middle schools in our overall strategy.”

We need a bolder approach

So far, Bertoline says the initiative is on track and heading in the right direction. In pinpointing the difficult aspects of developing a STEM-focused high school, he says the biggest challenge has been addressing the successful blending of K-12 curriculums and goals with higher education’s programs and aspirations.

“Historically, the easy route has been to sit back and hope that K-12 and higher ed will both figure it out, and that we come up with an answer that will somehow work for everyone,” says Bertoline. “And while we’ve all made some incremental changes along the way, they just aren’t working. We now need a bolder approach.”

Bridget McCrea is a contributing editor for eCampus News.