The 2025 NextGen STEMFest was funded through the National Science Foundation’s Innovative Technology Experiences for Students and Teachers Program (ITEST). The purpose of this program is to 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 I 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 college student (as far as I know, on both sides of the family) and grew up, let’s 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 the University of Kentucky thanks to NSF and had a wonderful undergraduate mentor. Got to do research as an undergraduate… met my wife at Michigan State as part of the National Science Foundation undergraduate REU program.

Without NSF it would have been highly unlikely that I would have made it to college and have 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 5 years to graduate from college with a degree in Physics — I was *way* behind in math at the start, but I eventually caught up, learned general relativity, and focused on cosmology as my area of study. And I would not have met my wife if I had not gone to college. As we tell our youth, developing and growing your scientific skills can open many doors, many of which are often unexpected, but the doors will be there for you to open if you have strong scientific skills.

I went to grad school at Indiana University, where 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 an 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. We strive to make NextGEN STEMFest an event where anyone and everyone can come, feel welcome, and enjoy doing science. In fact, it was our fantastic Charles River Collaboratory youth who came up with the festival’s name and helped develop the initial ideas and structure.

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 30th (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 there that often just need time, patience, support, and some opportunities to figure it out.

We are extremely grateful for the NSF funding to support the work and the youth in our programs, and we hope this event will inspire you to learn more about what you see and experience 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.

For 2026, we have been seeking funds to ensure that we have an event that is bigger, better, and just as much fun and engaging as the 2025 event was. Please pay attention to this space, the website, and our social media pages for updates over the coming weeks and months!