STEMM Opportunity Alliance Reaches 125 Partners across Sectors

WASHINGTON, DC — The STEMM Opportunity Alliance (SOA), a national effort uniting stakeholders to achieve equity and excellence in science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and medicine (STEMM) by 2050, announced a new milestone of 125 partners. The announcement comes as SOA rounds out its co-construction work to craft a national strategy to build an inclusive STEMM workforce and on the heels of two recent convenings in St. Paul, MN and Chicago, IL

These newest partners embody the kind of ecosystem-wide change necessary to achieve equity in STEMM. Enabling equal opportunity to enter the STEMM field is essential to the scientific enterprise, critical for US growth and competitiveness and necessary for building a just society and better individual lives.

Highlights from SOA’s new partners and their commitments to increasing equity in STEMM include:

American Indian Science and Engineering Society is expanding the scope and scale of its programming to better reach and serve pre-K-12 and college/university students and professionals from the First Nations, Metis, and Inuit populations in Canada.
American Museum of Natural History will prepare 44 highly qualified Earth science teachers to teach in high-need schools over the next two years and support an additional 900 teachers across New York City over the next one to three years.
St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital will create an equitable and culturally-responsive environment through the St. Jude STEMM Education and Outreach Program to provide career training and enhancement for pre-K-12 students in STEMM fields.

Since its launch at the White House Summit on STEMM Equity and Excellence in December 2022, SOA has hosted seven convenings across the US to co-construct a strategy that addresses the five action areas described by the Biden Administration to transform and enhance the US STEMM ecosystem. The strategy is being informed by stakeholders across various sectors and will include ambitious and tangible goals as guiding principles for equity work across the SOA community.

Recently, SOA and 3M convened industry leaders in St. Paul, MN, to discuss how industry and higher education can collaborate to prepare the workforce of the future, and strategies to bolster rural education and workforce development.

"Our needs outpace the skilled workers that we have and that will only continue to grow at home. We can take advantage of historic legislation (CHIPS) that will herd a new era of federal focus on innovation that will make the future brighter for us. We need people who will implement it from all of our communities. No one can be left on the sidelines.” said Representative Betty McCollum (D-Minn.) in her keynote address in St. Paul.

Last week, SOA also held an event at The Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago, where leaders in education and workforce development discussed how to improve K-12 teacher diversity and implement inclusive STEMM teaching and learning with a focus on urban education and workforce development.

“The STEMM Opportunity Alliance is a generational, cathedral building effort. Our mission is to build an equitable STEMM ecosystem so that every individual, regardless of race, ethnicity, gender identity, sexual orientation, disability, or geographic location will view STEMM as their birthright.” said Travis York, SOA executive who leads external diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility initiatives at the American Association for the Advancement of Science. “Across industries and sectors, leaders are committing to this work because they rightly recognize that a STEMM ecosystem that includes diverse perspectives makes science better, improves individual lives, and bolsters US economic competitiveness.”

- This press release was provided by the American Association for the Advancement of Science website