(bright ambient music)

So, first of all, I would like to give all of you a very, very warm welcome to the second annual VEX Robotics Educators Conference, the 2024 VEX Robotics Educators Conference. So welcome very much for coming. I'm gonna give a short welcome and introduction. Then I'm gonna turn it over to our opening keynote speakers here in a moment.

But just a few logistics I wanted to go over with you right now. First of all, all of you will get a certificate with your professional development hours on it that will actually be delivered to your Professional Development Plus dashboard. Last year, we printed them all out at the end of the conference. Now, we have the functionality within the dashboard to give that to you, so it'll just magically appear there when the conference is over and completed.

One of the most popular parts of our conference is the pit walk and tour. That's happening at 3:30. So we're all gonna meet here at 3:30. So if you go and grab something to eat or do something like that, please make sure that you're back here at 3:30. We have a few folks that are gonna be our tour guides. I'm one of them. We'll put you in groups of like 10 or 15, and we'll go down, take a tour of the pits and see all the wonderful things that are going on during the actual robotics competition that's going on downstairs.

Then right after that, at 4:30, we have our happy hour, our networking happy hour. That's a chance for all of us to get an opportunity to get to know one another, to talk to one another. We'll facilitate and do that beginning at 4:30 here today.

Ambassador Program, something we're very excited about. This summer, we'll be launching a Teacher Ambassador Program. I just wanna give you a quick heads up about that. There will be some more information forthcoming in the VEX Professional Development Plus platform about that. But in the meantime, if you have any questions about that, please go ahead and email Nicole and she'll be happy to engage you about our upcoming ambassador program.

Speaking of Nicole, where is Nicole? There she is. Everyone, please give Nicole a round of applause. (audience cheering)

Yes. All of you know, all of you have gotten emails from her and all the notice, everything that she's done, she's really put a lot of hard work and effort into this. So thank you very much, Nicole, for doing this. Again, if you were here last year, you'll notice the more things that we have, we have workshops this year, we have more people here this year, all of that is due to the hard work of Nicole. So thank you very, very much, Nicole.

So to welcome you all here to our conference this year, I'd like to start with a story. This story actually comes as, it's a small story from my first year teaching. I started teaching in 1997, and the woman across the hall, yeah, I started when I was 11. The woman across the hall from me, her name was Mrs. Morris, and she taught across the hall from me. And to be completely and totally honest with you, I really didn't respect Mrs. Morris as a teacher. She didn't really seem to do much. It was her last year of teaching. She was getting ready to retire, and it seemed like she had kind of checked out already.

And I was young, I was arrogant, thought I knew it all as a first-year teacher, thought I knew how to do everything. And all those feelings I had were accelerated because in April of that year, she shut her classroom down and she spent the last three months of the school year, her students practiced the Hawaiian luau. So all day, that's all they did, was practice for a luau. And then the last week of school, they did the luau. The parents came in and I thought to myself, "This is ridiculous. This teacher is spending the last three months of the school year doing this." And again, I just did not have a lot of respect for her at all. Fast forward, a year later, she was retired.

A year later, a group of us decided that we were going to run the Pittsburgh Marathon. Each of us did a leg in the marathon, raising funds for the school. We had the name of our school on our shirts, and we were standing in a warmup area when a gentleman walked up to me and said, "Hey, you teach at Hopewell?" That's the name of the school I used to teach at. I replied, "Yeah, I've been teaching there for two years now." He then shared, "Oh, I graduated from Hopewell." I responded, "Oh, that's great. That's fantastic."

He began to tell me that he's an orthopedic surgeon and has done very well for himself. He said, "You know, when I was in middle school, my parents got divorced, and I was having a really rough time. One teacher turned my life around. Her name was Mrs. Morris." At that moment, I felt about this tall because Mrs. Morris was the teacher I had thought was terrible, yet she had turned this person's life around.

So, what's the takeaway from that? The takeaway is that great teaching is often unexpected. Great teachers are often ineffable. Great teaching sometimes involves risk, and it's about making that personal connection with a student that really ignites the learning within them.

You're going to hear from a lot of great teachers from this stage over the next few days. You'll see many great teachers in the hallway, and during the networking happy hour, you'll talk to many of the great teachers inside this room. When all of that is going on, I know, because I've been teaching my entire life, you're going to have that little voice in the back of your head saying, "You know, they're doing such a great job in their school, but I can't do that in my school." You might think, "That person is doing fantastic, but I'm just not sure that I can do that." There will be a myriad of reasons why you think you can't.

And when that voice comes into your head, I want you to think of the Joker.

(audience laughing)

It's a great picture. I love Christopher Nolan movies, and all Christopher Nolan movies are about an idea of constraint. The Joker is so happy right now. He's like a dog sticking his head out the window because he just got arrested. The Joker is going to unleash his master plan while he's in jail, and that's a theme throughout all of Christopher Nolan's movies. That's what I want you to think about today.

Yes, I know your schools are underfunded. Yes, I know you have too many kids in your classroom. Yes, I know your principal doesn't understand what you do in your classroom, but that's okay. Embrace those constraints like the Joker does. Embrace those constraints. Don't run away from them; run to them. Know that you're not alone. Know that you can tackle those challenges together with the group we have here and the group of educators we have all over the world. All it takes is just a little bit of audacity. That's it. Just a little bit of audacity, like Mrs. Morris in her Hawaiian luau. It's all it takes. We can accomplish great things, and we can accomplish great things together.

Now, that's a great segue into our keynote speakers to start off our conference because they're going to share with you a lot of wonderful resources and opportunities that you can utilize in your school and in your classrooms. We are so honored and privileged to have Dr. Rebecca Grella and the director of DoD STEM, Louie Lopez, to share with you some of the amazing things that the Department of Defense can offer to help you accomplish all of those wonderful things you want to do in your classroom.

So without any further ado, again, it is my privilege and my honor to introduce to you our keynote speakers for the 2024 VEX Robotics Educator Conference, Dr. Rebecca Grella and the director of DoD STEM, Mr. Louie Lopez.

(audience clapping)

Thank you, Jason, for that wonderful introduction. I thought you were gonna make fun of my shoes. Never. Just a little highlight on my shoes. I'm wearing a pair of Air Force Ones, and they're called My Project Shoes, and I refuse to take them off until I'm done with projects. So all of you are involved in my projects one way or another.

I will be introducing to you today an incredible human being and my mentor in the Department of Defense STEM. I am here through the Office of Secretary of Defense as an Albert Einstein Distinguished Fellow. I wear many hats. I'm a trained ecology and evolutionary biologist turned robot aficionado. So please don't tell my PhD advisor that I am here playing with robots. It's okay. It's okay. I'm here, like I said, as an Albert Einstein fellow working in the office of the Secretary of Defense, DoD STEM office. And that is one of probably the most important titles that I've ever had and one of the most important titles that I'm really grateful to be able to share with all of you.

For those of you that are not familiar with the Albert Einstein Distinguished Educator Fellowship program, the AEF program places STEM educators in federal agencies so that our thoughts, visions, and our ideas can be brought to fruition. And in so doing, we help guide federal agencies on the direct needs of educators and communities. For the past nine months, I've been your voice in the federal STEM working space, working on projects like the White House five-year strategic plan for STEM, the Earth Rise Initiative, and the White House Find Your Place in Space. All of these have been incredible opportunities, but most importantly, what they showcase is that these endeavors are interagency partnerships that are ongoing within these federal spheres. And these interagency partnerships are what we need to see within our K through 12 and K through 20 education space.

Living and working in DC has been quite transformative. Learning to drink from the federal hose, I probably know more acronyms than I know people. That's true. In 2012, I had an opportunity where my student was experiencing homelessness, when President Obama, after she won a science competition, invited her and me to the White House to the State of the Union address. Samantha was suffering homelessness, and her recognition in a science competition changed and transformed her life as well as her family's by giving them a home. I would've never imagined that 12 years later I'd be back in DC working with the DoD STEM team to promote the vision and mission, to inspire, to cultivate, and to develop a diverse and exceptional STEM talent.

For 22 years, yes, I'm 30. (audience laughing) I knew you'd laugh. I'm 30. For 22 years, I've worked to narrow equity gaps in the Brentwood Union Free School District. The Brentwood Union Free School District is the largest suburban public school district in the state of New York. Had a paucity of resources for students throughout my entire career. I knew, you know, ultimately that there'd be some sort of solution, and I was met with a lot of constraints. So I know what it's like to fight for resources for students. I know that when we focus our efforts and that when we develop partnerships, that anything is possible, but it's not possible without access to funding. Access to funding is critical, which has been shown that increased funding opportunity positively impacts academic performance, graduation rates, and future earnings, especially for students and families of low income and for students of color. I've been working for 22 years trying to narrow achievement gaps.

And for 22 years, I've been fighting for resources. When I began my career in the Brentwood Union Free School District, there was a paucity of rigorous STEM instruction. We did not even have resources to conduct laboratory activities. I, like many of you, probably had a variety of homegrown tools and resources that I relied on, but I turned to grant writing as a ticket out.

When I began this grant writing process, I was often met with, "Ms. Grella. We regret to inform you." Hmm. However, it did not deter me. As the adage says, you fall down seven times, you get up how many? Eight. Eight. In Japanese, (speaking in foreign language), which translates to never give up hope and always strive for more. It means that your focus isn't on the reality in front of you, but on a greater vision that may not be a reality yet.

I can remember being all called over the loudspeaker to the principal's office thinking I was gonna get busted for lighting a garbage can on fire, on the football field. You don't light garbage cans on fire, on your football fields?

(audience laughing)

Only to be told that the school was going to be the recipient of a $10,000 Toyota grant. That $10,000 was the beginning of many successes. Ultimately, this turned into grants as large as 1.5 million. Future calls were not to the principal's office, but rather to the superintendent's office. "Dr. Grella, will you please help us prepare this grant application?"

My point here is that we cannot give up when we're met with adversity and challenges. In fact, we need them to grow and to pivot. I did get in trouble for lighting that garbage can on fire and ruining it. But what I created was what my wife coins, STEM-thusiasm. I created STEM-thusiasm, looking for STEM events with initiatives that bring joy and rigor and most importantly, collaboration. This is what we see on the faces of all the students that are out doing this VEX competition. It's what I see when I look at all of you, STEM-thusiasm. You're here because STEM is driving you.

We need to create this rigorous STEM opportunity while focusing on us, too. And our power of why. Don't forget your why. This invigorates us as educators. And by focusing our efforts and our passions, or as we say our Ikigai, back to the Japanese, we create that STEM-thusiasm. That STEM-thusiasm is in us and it's in our educators and our students.

As educators, it is imperative for us to close gaps in STEM. Many students never have access to STEM opportunities or are aware of their availabilities because educators are not aware. Educators are often spread in a thousand directions. We wear so many hats. I use the analogy, we're a tablespoon of mayonnaise on a six-foot sub. Think of that.

When you look around, there are resources everywhere. The DoD STEM resources that you're gonna hear about today are the result of lasting partnerships. These partnerships are with organizations throughout the nation. These partnerships are able to transform your communities and your classrooms. The REC Foundation, which sponsors the championship competitions and the competitions that you see are the results of a partnership with the Defense STEM Education Consortium. The VEX Robotics company drives STEM-thusiasm. You are in the heart of STEM-thusiasm right now.

And we need these partnerships for the success of educators throughout the country so that everyone has STEM-thusiasm and everyone has an opportunity. And it is my goal to continue to share my STEM-thusiasm, but more importantly, the DODs STEM-thusiasm. And I'm hoping that every educator has a voice within this space to become STEM-thusiastic.

And I hope for all of you, HOPE, Have Only Positive Expectations. And that is what I've learned this year, working with an incredible human being, my mentor, my colleague, and my friend, the Director of DoD STEM, Mr.

Louie Lopez is going to share with you an incredible toolbox of resources for you to hopefully share with others. So remain STEM-thusiastic, and thank you for your time. And thank you for being here for our kids.

(audience clapping)

Well, thank you, Dr. Grella. It's always a tough act to follow, Dr. Grella. I just closed out your slides. You did? So this is to show you that we're both educators. You know, on the contrary, when Dr. Grella came as our Einstein fellow, she came with a lot of ideas. It was her energy and her STEM-Thusiasm that really propelled some of the things that we're doing this year, and hopefully beyond.

Before we get started here, I just wanted to say thank you to REC Foundation. Thank you to VEX Robotics, Jason, Tim, and Dawn, who I had the pleasure of meeting with yesterday or last evening. It's really great to be here, to be able to be provided a platform to talk to you about the many opportunities for teachers, educators, as well as our students within the Department of Defense.

We're good. So. All right. Okay, so I wanted to make this a little bit different. I'm sure some of you are probably familiar with some of the tools to get your students engaged in a classroom. So if you could break out your phone, I have some questions as we go along and talk to you about the different opportunities within DoD STEM.

I'm aware from what Jason and Tim have shared with me, and Nicole and others, that many of you here are classroom teachers, educators, and administrators. So I just wanted to get some information from you. If you could, scan the QR code here or go to menti.com and put in this code here. And don't worry if you miss this. When we get to the slides or we actually get to ask you questions, this code and the link will still be there. But this gives us an idea whenever we talk to a group of educators and audience, like the one we have today, some information on how we want to shape our future programming and our investments.

Okay, so first question, who's in the audience? Do we have primary classroom teachers, secondary, middle school, high school, post-secondary, administrators? Do we have anyone from nonprofit organizations, industry, or other government? Okay, looks like a good number of you are in the K through 12 STEM space. But also, it's great to see a good number from post-secondary and our industry partners.

All right, another question. How many years have you been a teacher or an educator? I always ask this. I like this question when I talk to teachers. I actually toyed with a question, how many years have you been involved in VEX Robotics? But I just wanted to keep consistent with the other questions that we've asked when we travel around the country and ask and talk to audiences like the one we have today. Wow, that's amazing. A good percentage of you are in, 11 to 20 and 21 to 30. So thank you for providing your input there.

So why STEM? Why is the Department of Defense invested in STEM education? As the largest employer of federal scientists and engineers across the federal government, where we employ close to 300,000 STEM professionals, about 85,000 of those STEM professionals are doing some phenomenal research and engineering at any one of our defense research laboratories and engineering centers to develop technologies that keep our nations safe and to ensure that our men and women in uniform have the technologies that they need when we send them out to complete a mission and return home safely. So it is a national security imperative for us that we invest in STEM education as early as K through 12, and that the nation and the department have enduring access to this talent.

And working for an organization focused on research and engineering within the Department of Defense, our scientists and engineers are always pushing the envelope when it comes to technology development, ensuring that we're out-innovating our peers, again, for the mission of national security. We believe that diversity drives this innovation, whether it's diversity in cultural upbringing, academic diversity, and many others. As I mentioned earlier, this really starts at the K through 12 level.

Interestingly enough, as I talk a little bit about DoD STEM, most of our investments are at the post-secondary level, although we do have quite a good number of folks across the department engaged in K through 12, much like our partnership with REC Foundation, VEX Robotics, and so on.

[Music Cue]

All right, so here's the next question. How many of you have heard of DoD STEM before? Can you name some of those programs, or have you heard of it but can't name any of the programs? Okay, cool. So hopefully, for those of you who have heard of us, some of these won't be as repetitive, but thank you for providing your feedback there.

So what encompasses DoD STEM? It's really, as Dr. Grella had mentioned earlier, our mission to inspire, cultivate, and develop diverse, exceptional talent for the nation and the Department of Defense to draw this talent from. We do this through partnerships. We couldn't do this alone. We do this through partnerships and our funding opportunity announcements to schools, teachers, industry, and non-profit organizations. Annually, we're reaching about almost a million students and about 30,000 educators. We were probably just a little bit over a million pre-pandemic, and we're starting to make up some of that time lost during Covid.

And how do we do this through DoD STEM? Sometimes I get this question, well, what does DoD have to provide when it comes to STEM education? We feel that our unique assets that can contribute to STEM education, outside of being able to provide resources and funding, are our DoD scientists and engineers. It's our research laboratories and engineering centers that really bring about the practical application of what the students are learning in the classroom, much like what you all are instilling in our students participating in VEX Robotics this week.

In the department, we probably have about 200, over 200 programs. I can't name them all, of course, and couldn't fit them in one slide, but we just bin them in separate activities, whether it's enrichment activities or summer STEM camps. I think in any given year, we probably have close to 80,000 students that we provide some sort of STEM programming over the summer, whether it's a week-long, two weeks long, or more, happening at any one of our defense research laboratories or our partner universities.

[Music Cue]

So I believe my next chart here talks about some sample programs for educators specifically. I'll talk a little bit about programs for students in a little bit. Dr. Grella mentioned one of these. I was able to bring in Dr. Grella and other Einstein fellows before her because I'm a strong believer in having a practitioner's perspective when it comes to shaping our agency's policy on STEM education and workforce development. It's also great to have insight from a classroom teacher who can tell us, you know, and often Dr. Grella would tell me, "Louie, that's not gonna work. We have to take a different approach." So it's really great to have those insights from a classroom educator.

It's too bad that we only have our Einstein fellows for a year. I wish it was a little bit longer. We've already identified who's going to be our Einstein fellow next year, and we're looking forward to bringing someone on board. I'll just highlight a couple of these programs.

[Music Cue]

Thank you for your attention and for being part of this important conversation. We appreciate your commitment to advancing STEM education and look forward to continued collaboration.

Most of these, as you can see on this QR code, you can actually pull these programs out of our DODSTEM.US website. Another one, and it's interesting, Jason mentioned about your ambassador program, that you all will be introducing here soon. We just started this actually during the pandemic. One of the things, I think Jason and Dr. Grella mentioned this, a lot of our issues when it comes to our programs is just ensuring that teachers and educators like you, parents and students, are aware of all these different opportunities.

So a couple of years ago, we started the DoD STEM Ambassador Program. We wanted to make sure that we get feedback from classroom teachers and we want classroom teachers to be ambassadors of the different programs that we have to offer. So we partnered up with Tiger Woods's TGR Foundation, and what we said is, okay, we're gonna ask some teachers to engage with us for 11 months during the year. We'll give them a $12,500 stipend. We'll give them $5,000 in classroom supplies worth, and then we'll give them a little bit of travel money to go to conferences and talk about the different programs within DoD. So that's something that we continue to do. I think we just finished this year's application, so it won't be until next year, but again, through our DODSTEM.US website.

Another one that I'll talk about, 'cause I wanna make sure I mention some of our colleagues from the US Space Force and Air Force, because I believe some of them are here today. They started a few years ago where they're linking classrooms to a DoD scientist or engineer. So a DoD scientist or engineer can talk a little bit about what they do day in and day out in their profession as a STEM professional within the Department of Defense.

Okay, so I'll spend a few minutes about this next program because I think a lot of you would appreciate learning about this program we've had in DoD for the past, what is it now? 18 years. It started in 2006. So the SMART Scholarship Program is Science, Mathematics, and Research for Transformation. And this program is probably our largest investment when it comes to STEM education for the Department of Defense. Because with this program, it allows us to attract students at the bachelor's, master's, and PhD, invest in their education and give them a guaranteed job after graduation.

So I'll talk a little bit about this in just a couple of minutes. So SMART Scholarship awards in any of the 24 STEM disciplines, we feel, is important to national security. And you'll probably hear, mechanical engineering, computer science, and electrical engineering are our top disciplines. As you can imagine, that's portable across many different parts of our technology mission. Students have eligibility up to five years on this. But here's what I always tell students. We pay for your full college tuition at the college of your choice. And then on top of that, we pay you annually, anywhere from $30,000 to $46,000 as a living allowance stipend. And then over the summer, you get to do a research or engineering internship at a sponsoring DoD lab or engineering center.

And I say, well, what's the catch? Well, for every one year of scholarship that you receive from the Department of Defense, you would have to repay DoD as a civilian scientist or engineer once you graduate from college. But I always tell the student, you know, I had the hardest time getting a job right after college. But now these students, if they're selected as SMART scholars, not only are their college costs paid for, but now they have a guaranteed job right after. And about 70% of our SMART scholars have stuck around after they've completed their service requirements. So if they got three years of scholarship, they worked as a civilian scientist or engineer for three years, but some of them have still stuck around and continued the DoD mission.

Thank you for your attention and interest in our programs. We look forward to seeing how you can engage with these opportunities and help us spread the word.

So SMART Scholarships, smartscholarship.org, our website is there. We've really benefited from the support of our leadership in Congress over the past few years because we've been able to increase the number of scholarships that we've awarded. I think when I started this job about five years ago, we were probably awarding somewhere around 300 scholarships per year. Over the next five years, we're looking to award 500 to 550 scholarships per year. You can imagine the cost of education and a multi-year investment in students' degrees is costly on top of the stipends that they get.

Okay, so I won't go too much into this. It's all on the website, but there are some requirements. As you can imagine, for us, students have to have US citizenship because they have to obtain a security clearance to be able to work for the Department of Defense.

Okay, I hope this isn't a tough question, and hopefully, VEX is all over the front of this, right? So what STEM programs do you engage your students in? You can provide multiple entries, whether it's VEX or something else that you do within your schools or classrooms.

(no audio)

Great, thank you for that input. I'm seeing some familiar programs here, of course, VEX Robotics. I see science fair. I see some of you are also doing Project Lead the Way. Some of our local defense research laboratories work with state or regional Project Lead the Way. I think I saw them having a booth outside. Thank you for your input there.

Now another thing that we said we would provide a little bit of background is what Dr. Grella mentioned, the Defense STEM Education Consortium or DSEC. We're really excited that a couple years ago, we were able to partner up with REC Foundation to provide these drone competitions at select regions across the country. I don't wanna put any promises to our partners at REC Foundation or VEX Robotics, but I'm hoping that in the next, you know, few years, what I envision is having, because right now we do STEM grants for our scientists and engineers to come to us and say, "Hey, DoD STEM, I wanna coach or mentor a robotics team." And then they apply for a grant.

So every year, and I won't get in trouble if I say this right, Jason? So right now, most of those grants are FIRST robotics grants. We only have a few that are working on VEX Robotics. But I'm hoping my vision is in the next, you know, five years or so, that our grants will increase requests to fund VEX Robotics, as well as drone competition.

The Defense STEM Education Consortium really started about five years ago. We wanted to work with a consortium of our organization to provide this continuum of activities across the K through 12. We wanted students to be continued to engage in their interest in math and science, much like what REC Foundation and VEX Robotics is doing with a continuum of activities across the K through 12 and beyond. You probably see some of our partners here.

Another way that we've provided an opportunity for you and for our students is because there's so much stuff happening across the department. Actually, sometimes I even find out programs that existed for 10, 15 years and I haven't heard of it. And I was like, okay, we gotta put it on our website. So again, on our website, you'll be able to search by type, by audience, by grade level. I encourage you to look through there and share that with your students.

We've also recently, from the urging of some of our educators, like you, as well as our partners, said, you know, we ought to provide a portion of our website to have students explore STEM careers within the Department of Defense. So also within the DoD website, it allows you to explore these different fields, which then comes up with videos of some of our DoD scientists and engineers about what they do in their profession.

And then also lining up some of the different STEM education programs to a particular career field. And I believe that takes me to this one. Make sure if you haven't connected with us, some of our opportunities, we do post on some of the social media platforms.

My last question for you all, what do you value most in a STEM program for your students? And you can put multiple responses. I'd just be curious, what do you look for when you start considering VEX or PLTW or some of you have mentioned math competition, science fair. So as you're continuing to put input here, I'll just close this up for us here.

For DoD STEM, what we value most when it comes to our STEM programming is our classroom teachers and that's you in this audience. We believe that we must program in all of our investments how we can enable and empower our classroom teachers to make that connection, as Jason mentioned earlier.

You know just a little bit of a story that I'll share with you and then we'll close this up. I immigrated into this country. Since we're truthful of our, we're being transparent of our age, 10 years ago when I graduated from high school. Is that how we start?

(audience laughing)

So when I was young, my parents made this difficult decision to send us here to the United States for a better future. I was about 11. And although I had relatives here, some of them I haven't seen in my life, I haven't seen my parents again until I turned 30 when they were able to come here. So I moved from home to home along with my siblings, but I've always, always had a great connection with my teachers. Not all of them, but there were some that I really had a good relationship with.

One of those teachers, every year, I still send him a text or sometimes send him a little note. What's coming around in the first week of May or so? It's National Teacher's Appreciation Day. And that time I always send them a note, say, "Thank you for believing in me. Thank you for encouraging me," much like what Jason was telling a story later, he exposed me to the outdoors, going on science field trips and camps. He exposed me to volunteering on a summer camp with kids who have cystic fibrosis.

So why am I telling you this? Again, to hammer home the message that Jason was saying earlier, you all make an impact in the students' lives. I know my teachers made an impact and I've made it my lifelong career passion to pay it forward, to be able to continue to serve our country as well as provide for students and educators like you.

So again, on behalf of DoD STEM, thank you for what you do for our students, thank you for what you do with our schools and communities. We're certainly appreciative of your efforts.

(audience clapping)

Oh, I forgot. There's a question? So potentially. Okay. Unless you wow them all into science, which it sounds, which is a possibility. If you have questions, we would love to hear your questions. We would just ask, raise your hand and Tom or someone will come around and give you a microphone, so that you can ask your questions.

Just by the way, also, this table over here has a lot of the literature that both Rebecca and Louie talked about, is over here. So if you have any, you wanna make sure you pick up some of that before you do. But does anyone have any questions?

Will the slides be available to us later on? Yes. So all of this is being recorded. So all of this will be in the Professional Development Plus. If there's particular slides or anything that you wanted, just please email Nicole and she'll get that to you.

Yes. Question over here. Thank you so much for your presentation and all the useful information that you have provided us. I'm a teacher from Canada and I'm wondering if there are any other opportunities available for Canadian students or teachers from the slides that you have mentioned? Or not necessarily Canadians, but international opportunities.

You know, that's an interesting question. A lot of what our investments are when it comes to DoD STEM education is focused on building a domestic talent pool. Having said that, in our broader STEM talent development, we do attract students not necessarily within the DoD STEM program, but we look at how we can retain some of the talent that comes into our institutions, especially at the post-secondary level.

As far as the SMART Scholarship is concerned, it was actually in 2018 or 2017 when Congress changed the statute of the SMART Scholarship to include certain countries like Canada, the UK, Australia, New Zealand, and I forget what the fifth country is. But students from those countries are able to apply for the SMART Scholarship. That's terrific because we have representatives from the UK, Australia, and New Zealand all here in the audience right now. So that's fantastic.

Thank you. And I just have a follow-up on your question. A lot of the resources that are available on our website are available to everyone. So this isn't just for United States-based programs. These initiatives can be brought forth into any community globally. You can rely on these resources because many of the partners' resources are available for free.

Great. Any other questions? Please, don't be shy. Upfront.

Thank you so much. Is there any scholarship available for teachers? Right now, we don't. Most of our scholarships are for students. But believe it or not, I think through our SMART Scholarship, we probably had in years past some teachers who wanted to get an advanced degree and wanted to venture into working for the federal government, have competed for the SMART Scholarship.

And also, just as a reminder, Louie mentioned in his presentation the DoD STEM Ambassador Program, which I believe is like a $12,000 stipend, which is the largest stipend that I ever got when I taught, let me tell you. And also some travel money for that. So I would encourage, it's not a scholarship, but I would encourage you to look into that also because all of you are doing wonderful things in STEM, so I would definitely look into that, too.

Other questions? Yes? Tom, you wanna get that, please?

Hi, thanks for having us. I'm just curious if DoD STEM is also widening its lens? I see science, technology, engineering, mathematics, but there are a lot of schools and careers that are adjacent to those. So, you know, I know the stats are out there. There's the aging, there's a huge gap for skills, skilled trades. They work with engineers and technologists. So I'm just curious if that's part of the plan as well. Thank you.

Yeah, absolutely. Thank you for bringing up that question. When we did our last five-year strategy and we're about to renew, we made sure to promote multiple pathways. Not everyone's gonna be a bench scientist or researcher in one of our labs. But career technical education, especially in the manufacturing space, and certifications at the two-year institutions, whether it's in cyber or IT, are in high demand for the department.

I'm sure some of you probably heard of this. Over the last several years, Congress has authorized the department to build the next submarine class ships, as well as carriers. But right now, the toughest part for our industry that builds those for us is getting the talent and the skilled technicians that you mentioned. So yes, some of our investments and some of the grants that we've awarded in the past couple of years have looked at building the skilled technical workforce. Another part of the Department of Defense also funds community colleges and nonprofit organizations to really look at how we can build those skilled technicians. So hopefully, that answered your question.

Right here. Good afternoon. I actually work in Washington DC, so I'm right there in your backyard. I'm a CTE educator at a high school, charter school in the inner city. And I'm wondering, one of our biggest problems is getting professionals, engineers, scientists, to come into the schools to mentor inner city kids who don't have any, you know, concept or role models of scientists and engineers and what they do. So I'm asking, do you have any type of liaison to get some of those professionals into the schools to work hands, you know, one-on-one and build relationships with high school students?

Absolutely. So the way that we do this is that our DoD research laboratories and engineering centers, and there's a whole bunch in the DC area. So whether it's Naval Research Laboratory, Army Research Laboratory, there's Walter Reed Medical Research, not that far, but reach out, I think through our website, you can inquire and we will pass it on to whether it's the Army or the Navy. I know that there are some folks that go to the local DC schools and I just named NRL and ARL as the predominant organizations that are very involved in DC schools.

Other questions? One more? Last one. Nicole told me we have time for one more. Yes, sir. One second.

Hi, thank you for the opportunity and the presentation. My name's Laron Barber. You've mentioned, and I just see the program or this conference, this session is like you mentioned, more for educators and teachers. We're a nonprofit industry. So any word that you would say to us, we have submitted a proposal we're waiting on with the Office of Naval Research, so I was just glad to see this presentation, and we're here. So what would you say to industry?

I'm sorry, sir, I couldn't hear, I know you said something about you've applied to grants before at Naval Research, all and on. Yeah. Okay. So my question was basically, because this session pretty much was geared for educators, so what would be your comment to nonprofits in industry in terms of, you know, engaging in this?

Okay, so great question. We have some opportunities that are catered just for educators, whether it's the Department of Defense Educational Activity School Partnership Grants, as an example. But ONR is one of those examples, and so is our program, the National Defense Education Program, or NDEP. Over the last couple of years, we've awarded a good share of our grants to nonprofit organization, academia, four-year institutions, as well as community colleges. So actually a lot of our partners in K through 12 STEM education are in the non-profit sector.

One more round of applause, please, for our keynotes, Dr. Rebecca Grella and Louie Lopez.

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