In 2022, Angie McMurry from the Ohio Academy of Science got a chance to work with some students from Northridge, a suburb of Dayton that had been horribly ravaged by tornadoes in 2019. It was another instance for the OAS director of programs to witness the power of believing in students and giving them opportunities to succeed.
McMurray was able to connect with students through a STEM entrepreneurship program made possible through a grant from the Ohio Department of Education and coordinated by OAS. McMurray coordinated with partners like the local food bank, Dayton Metroparks and Waste Management to show the students how all the entities can work to support communities. Students stayed after school to work on their entrepreneurship programs and also attended field trips.
A celebration was held at the end of the program year where McMurry learned from one student that she had been living in her car with her mom. “She said, you know, I could have easily dropped out of school and I didn’t. I stuck in here because I wanted to complete this project,” McMurry recalled. “So to me, that was huge.”
That ability to impact lives is what drives McMurry to find new ways to communicate with students. The Ohio Academy of Science has been hosting science fairs across the state for more than 75 years, with a history that dates back even further – to 1891. It has supported STEM through awards-based events and helped host others, including district science fairs that are held throughout the state of Ohio in collaboration with 17 institutions of higher education.
But it is the future that excites McMurray.
New in 2022 was a State Science Day celebration held in conjunction with The Ohio State University. McMurry said it was her vision that the event become a professional symposium for students in grades five through 12, along with their parent chaperones.
“One of my favorite phrases right now is people don’t know what they don’t know,” McMurry said. “And it became very evident last year that parents of our youth in Ohio also do not know what all is out there for career readiness and future workforce in the areas of science and STEM.”
The pandemic caused the organization to pivot and embrace more visionary opportunities, McMurry said. As a result, the OAS is working on building capacity through an online and social learning platform, Project Board, allowing their programs to be more accessible to students in all corners of the state.
McMurry has pushed for greater accessibility, including many different ways of communicating information, and trying to eliminate sources of friction and meet students wherever they may be.
OAS programs, like the science fairs and entrepreneurship programs, allow students to work on projects and employ research and presentation skills, learn to ask good questions, synthesize data and present information visually. McMurry stresses that those are also the skills that employers seek. Instead of focusing solely on the event, the programs encourage growth in the preparation and building out the projects that then culminate in the event.
“Those are the things that our employers, whether a child is looking to go directly into employment, enlistment into our military services or enrollment into university, they’re looking for those skills,” McMurry said. “And so now our focus has turned not just to the event, but to the preparation for that and the project. And so in that we have more of that workforce connection than we’ve ever had before with really working with students, diving down deep and working with students on mastering and developing and in that confidence for their skills.”
OAS communicates with students largely through schools, but welcomes individuals outside of school settings as well. It is a membership-based non-profit that serves a broad group of stakeholders by conducting an annual meeting, publishing the Ohio Journal of Science, and running various pre-college STEM and STEM-based programs, including Science Day, Buckeye Science & Engineering Fair and Ohio STEP.
Two years ago, OAS teamed up with the free Project Board platform, enabling its use as a makerspace and archive of information, building a final product that the students can submit into competitions. In 2022, OAS had over 4,000 students and about 512 educators across the state of Ohio that engaged in the platform to develop their projects and they plan to increase that number.
The projects remain accessible to the students, even after the programs end, allowing them to build a portfolio that may be used when the student applies for college, scholarships, internships or jobs.
“And so they can see that those students have persevered through long-term projects. They have done critical thinking, They’ve problem solved, They’ve communicated. They have developed technical writing and ways of disseminating that information,” she said, emphasizing that every student in the state can develop these skills through the project platfom.
Projects are available for viewing online and McMurry hopes that career partners will reach out to OAS if they are looking for interns, and she can help facilitate a connection.
“My goal in this role as a passionate leader in STEM education is to be more and offer more than just pushing a button and asking Siri,” McMurry said. “I want to be the experience that solidifies a love of STEM or introduces a love of STEM, which will then, I truly believe, facilitate our entire state’s just amazingness. So that, that’s my goal.”
You can learn more about the OAS through this video. For more information on sponsorship and service opportunities, please reach out to Angie McMurry at amcmurry@ohiosci.org, or CEO Michael Woytek at mwoytek@ohiosci.org.