I retire from IBM at the end of the year after almost an LP’s worth of time - 33⅓ years☺. I thought it appropriate to use this final column as the IBM STEM Advocate to summarize just a few of the many IBM programs that support STEM and more.

I’ll start with Pathways in Technology Early College High School, P-TECH for short. That program launched over two years ago as a partnership among The City University of New York, New York City College of Technology, the New York City Department of Education, and IBM – an academic / government / industry partnership model. P-TECH was a new approach to grades 9-14 education; students graduate with an associates degree in applied science; each student has a mentor throughout their time at P-TECH; and most have an intern experience as well. In Brooklyn, New York, the third cohort of students is on campus. The growth continues with two more schools in New York City already opened and another three planned for the 2014-2015 school year.

As part of the IBM Smarter Cities Challenge, Chicago’s Mayor Rahm Emanuel asked the team to “…create a strategic, step-by-step operational plan to create an educational system that more effectively ties to Chicago's economic future.” IBM partnered with the City Colleges of Chicago, Richard J. Daley College, and the Chicago Public Schools and the Sarah E. Goode STEM Academy and is now in its second year using the P-TECH model in Chicago. IBM is not alone in Chicago, it has been joined by Cisco, Motorola Solutions, and Verizon Wireless for another three schools in the area using the P-TECH playbook. There will be 16 more P-TECH partnerships in New York state, and Idaho is creating a network based on the model to serve rural students throughout the state. As Stan Litow, IBM Vice President Corporate Citizenship and Corporate Affairs and President, IBM International Foundation, has said, “This is not a pipedream, it can be done.”

Teachers TryScience is another partnership that IBM formed to move STEM education forward over two years ago with the New York Hall of Science, TEACHEngineering, and National Board for Professional Teaching Standards. This is a resource for teachers, providing project-based lessons that can be used from upper elementary through high school. Lessons range from algebra to physics and can be completed in time ranges from less than one hour to more than eight hours. There are now more than 200 lessons, complemented by Strategies & Tutorials which include videos from Master Teachers to guide implementation of the lessons in the classroom. Teachers TryScience has a collaborative element as well, the Community, that allows teachers to develop lessons which they have found successful in their classrooms and share those with colleagues around the world. The newest component of the site, Kids TryScience, has experiments that kids can do at home to share their enthusiasm for STEM with their parents.

IBM has been part of DiscoverE and EWeek since it began its effort in 1990 through volunteers engaging students in engineering activities in classrooms and other venues. Three times, IBM has served as the co-chair of the effort as it expanded in scope from national to international over the past 24 years. In the 2013-2014 academic year, 4650 IBM employees from over 50 sites worldwide reached out to almost 180,000 students.

There are many examples of local efforts that have grown into ongoing programs that show IBM’s commitment to STEM education in the community. There is the Innovation Academy, a partnership between the St. Vrain Valley School District and IBM/Boulder that just completed its third year, Family Science Saturdays that has been hosted for more than 20 years by IBM Research, and IBM/Austin’s work as part of Austin Partners in Education Classroom Coaching to list just three.

Visit the Citizen IBM blog to read about IBM’s commitment to the community and STEM education from both employees and those affected by their work. Explore Citizenship worldwide to see the full breadth of IBM’s efforts in STEM and more. Try some of the activity kits yourself when you visit a classroom.

Although I am retiring from IBM, I am not retiring from STEM. Any extra time that I have will go to writing my blog on DrKold.org which has been neglected, writing up project lessons for Teachers TryScience, spending more time visiting classrooms and mentoring students, all things STEM and more.

Until the next issue and , as always, your comments and suggestions for future columns are welcome, @DrKold. Thanks and a Happy New Year!

The graphics and program names are trademarks of or copyrighted by their respective organizations.

Rick McMaster is the STEM Advocate at IBM’s University Programs Worldwide.

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