The NextGen STEMFest is funded through the National Science Foundation’s Innovative Technology Experiences for Students and Teachers Program (ITEST). The purpose of this program is support students and teachers in building and developing the skills to enter the 21st century workforce with the knowledge they need to be successful. As you have probably seen the National Science Foundation has recently eliminated many grants and freezing others. This will likely have significant long-term negative impacts for the nation and particularly this current generation of youth who could have benefited from such programs. This event takes on new meaning in light of the events unfolding at a national level and feel it is important to share the following Story.

I, Mike Barnett, am the Principal Investigator for the STEM Day award that enabled the event to take place. I am a first-generation student to college (as far as I know from both sides of the family) and grew up , lets say a few standard deviations (in the negative direction) from an affluent area in Kentucky. Fortunately, a faculty member at the University of Kentucky had received a NSF grant to provide funding and scholarships for kids who were interested in science. I got to study physics at UK thanks to NSF and a had a wonderful undergraduate mentor. Got to do research as an undergraduate… met my wife at Michigan State as part of National Science Foundation undergraduate REU program.

Without NSF it would have been highly unlikely that I would have made it to college and hhave the opportunities in college that I did (though Dad was determined that somehow his kids would be going to college somehow, finances though was going to make that extremely difficult as growing up it was not uncommon to hear my parents discussing how they were going to pay the light bill when I was a kid). I took five years to graduate from college with a degree in Physics- I was *way* behind in math at the start. And I would not have met my wife if I had not gone to college.

Went to grad school at Indiana University, another faculty member received funding to support graduate students to study astrophysics (I did everything but write the dissertation, not recommended as a way to figure out what it is that you really want to do, but I know a lot about the universe and math!). I met a 5th-grade teacher while in grad school (the fantastic Judy Morran!) and moved on to Instructional Technology, where another faculty member (my outstanding advisor) received a NSF grant to examine virtual reality environments for learning and teaching astronomy (where I did finish a Ph.D.).

What NSF has done for 75 years for EVERYONE is provide access to opportunities so they can maximize their potential, figure out what they can and want to do, and develop the skills to do it.

I’m deeply grateful to NSF as I going to college became both possible and feasible and allowed me to figure out what to do, and has for the past 20+ years enabled me and my fantastic team to research and develop programs that motivate and engage low-income, first gen kids to get excited about science again (all kids are excited about science, they just forget that they were). We have supported close to 8000 young people, most of whom come to our programs with low confidence or little interest in STEM over the years, some of whom will be our STEM DAY event at May 10th (some from our very first ITEST project back in 2005!) who went on to college, and graduated in engineering, physics, biology a few have Ph.Ds, and so on, some of them started as 8th graders in our programs, became leaders, taught some of them as Masters students in my classes, and now see them as STEM teachers, engineers, nurses, etc… I am a 2024 Presidential Awardee finalist for STEM mentoring for this work and will continue to do it.

So as disheartening as it is to see NSF dismantled we will continue to engage and work with young people to inspire them about STEM as without NSF being around who knows what I would be doing now and there are so many young people out that often just need time, patience, support, and some opportunities to figure it out.

We are extremly grateful for the funding from NSF to support the work, support the youth in our programs, and hope that this event will leave you inspired to learn more about what you see and experience while at NextGen STEMFest. We encourage you to invite others to see the youth in action as they run their workshops, share their work at the Charles River Collaboratory, and showcase their fantastic STEM skills.