Making Solutions in a STEM Outreach Lab
From Megan Rokop
In my article last month (see the February 2013 issue of STEM Pals), I discussed the challenges of funding STEM outreach programs. This month, I strive to turn the issue on its head, and share the results of brainstorming possible solutions to these challenges. Before I begin, I offer a big thanks to all of my friends & colleagues who have joined me in a series of fascinating brainstorming sessions over the past few months. It was a fun and intellectually stimulating series of conversations, and I hope you the reader enjoy the products of our efforts. This will be a two-part STEM Pals series, with “Cutting Costs” and “Raising Money” discussed in March, and “Staffing Solutions”, “Sharing Means Saving” and “Partnerships Pay Off” covered in April.

Cutting costs:
Running a lab is always expensive, whether it is an active research lab or a teaching lab. It can be quite helpful, in creating a sustainable lab-based outreach program, to spend time thinking up front about how to obtain equipment, reagents and lab space in the most cost-effective ways possible. Ideas relating to this include:

• Equipment:
  • If the outreach program is being run within a research institute, the research labs may be willing to donate used equipment to the outreach program lab space. Regular collection days (or coordination with lab clean up days) may facilitate frequent donations.
  • Used lab equipment can be found for sale on sites such as eBay or Craig's List.
• Reagents:
  • Some reagent-providing companies will donate reagents for educational use, whereas others may offer reagents at reduced prices.
  • If the outreach program is being run within a research institute, it may be possible for the purchasing department of the institute to ask reagent-providing companies to send extra reagents for educational use, along with large batches of reagents being purchased for standard research use.
  • If research labs at the institute would otherwise discard reagents once their expiration dates arrive, researchers may be willing to donate these reagents (which are often still fully functional beyond their expiration dates) to the outreach lab.
• Lab space: If K-12 students are visiting teaching lab spaces outside of school day hours (such as weekends or summers), it may be possible to use lab spaces that are utilized as undergraduate teaching labs during the school day. At the end of the spring semester, reagents that were purchased for undergraduate teaching labs may be utilizable by summer outreach programs, if those reagents would otherwise expire before the fall semester begins.
• Student intern stipends: If summer internships for students are a part of an outreach program, an important consideration is whether and how to pay these interns. Importantly, providing interns stipends means that the internship program is accessible to those students who need to work over the summer to contribute to their family's income. Possible mechanisms for addressing this point include:
  • Mayor's Programs: City-wide programs exist that will provide summer wages for high school students who obtain career-focused internships. Partnering with such a program could be utilized either to pay the wages for student interns participating in the outreach programming themselves, or for high school student interns who can assist with implementing programming for younger students.
  • School-sponsored internship programs: Some high schools organize programs for seniors, through which they can complete career-focused internship programs during the school day, in exchange for course credits that count towards fulfilling their graduation requirements. In this case, performing the internship would not take away from time when the students' families may need the students to be earning wages.
• Other expenses: If the outreach program incorporates bringing students to a teaching lab during school hours (e.g. on class field trips), providing bussing and lunch may be only way that low income schools & students will be able to visit. In this case, it may be worthwhile to approach local catering or bus companies to ask about possible donations of food or bussing for these student visits.

Raising money:
Given the challenges of each type of funding source that we discussed last month, what are some ideas for how to raise funds for STEM outreach programs?

• Grants for high needs students: STEM outreach programs are eligible for more funding sources if the program specifies a requirement for each student to be high needs (e.g. low income, underrepresented minorities, first generation to attend college, etc).
• Subsidizing programming for high needs students: If the outreach program serves a wide range of students, one consideration is to provide fee-based programming for non-high needs students, in order to subsidize programming for high needs students. Alternatively, funds to subsidize K-12 outreach programming can be obtained by providing fee-based professional development for groups such as international students, teachers, science journalists, patent lawyers, management consultants, investment bankers, nurses etc.
• Fundraisers: Potential donors could be introduced to the program by a fundraiser in which the donors and their families can come to an event where they experience the science outreach programming (e.g. a parent/child lab partner day in the outreach lab).
• Grant writers: It is always a challenge for those running outreach programs to balance preparing grant applications with also implementing the outreach programming. Choosing whether to use an external grant writing consultant is an important decision that involves calculating the benefits of how many grant applications are prepared & funded, versus the cost of the hourly consulting fees for the grant writer. The cost is purely monetary of course, though the benefits can include freeing up time for program staff to implement the outreach programming, and having grants submitted by grant writers who are specifically trained and experienced in grant writing, identifying potential donors, and fostering donor relations.
• Grants with mandatory outreach components: Outreach programs can benefit from making researchers at their institute aware that, if they are applying for a research grant with a mandatory outreach component, they can contact the outreach program for a potential partnership. In this instance, the outreach program can write a letter of support for the grant, in exchange for implementing the outreach described in the grant using the portion of the grant money allocated to these activities.
• Large government grants for STEM: Often these grants are focused on researching the efficacy of STEM outreach programming. In this case, an outreach program may partner with an evaluation organization to apply for such a grant, and share the funding among both implementation and evaluation of that program.

I hope these ideas are of help to you, as you strive to build a sustainable STEM outreach program. I most sincerely wish you the best of luck in your valiant efforts. Check back next month to read the second part of this series. And as always, if you would like to discuss any points from this article further, please don't hesitate to email me at <rokop @ alum.mit.edu>.

Megan Rokop is Educational Outreach Program Director at the Broad Institute of MIT & Harvard.

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