My Role

I founded Third Room in 2020 as a venture to explore industry-to-K12 partnerships during the COVID-19 pandemic. From Sept. 2020 to Feb. 2021, Third Room, MassBioEd, and the Massachusetts Rural Schools Coalition designed and piloted a virtual industry-school collaboration serving 7 rural districts in western MA reaching ~330 middle/high school students. This pilot connected rural STEM classrooms with local life science industry professionals serving as Career Ambassadors. The format was 3 virtual sessions for each classroom between students and about two dozen Career Ambassadors. The objectives of this pilot were to:

1. Expose students to biotech/life science careers that they were not aware of.

2. Build rapport between students and STEM professionals.

3. Help students see real-world applications of what they learn in class.

My role was designing the programmatic model and managing my colleague on the project management side. Third Room's overarching role was in the recruitment of schools and the instructional design behind the pilot. We also provided all the logistical and technical support and conducted data collection and analysis.

Learn more about the project here.

Evolution

This pilot program focused primarily on rural communities throughout MA, which I continue to be passionate about serving. I started my early professional career as an admissions counselor in the rural Midwest. Rural MA historically has had little access to the many opportunities that the growing presence of biotechnology companies provides to much of the state’s population. The pilot took place in seven towns across four counties—Berkshire, Franklin, Plymouth, and Worcester. Students in these communities face obstacles to engagement in extracurricular programming including long bus rides (up to 90 minutes) and limited or nonexistent after-school bussing. My goal was to demonstrate to corporate partners and our partnering organizations that building inroads into K-12 is essential to addressing future talent leads. Just as importantly, this effort can be low-lift as demonstrated in the pilot.

Achievements

• Impacted 330+ high school students, 22 corporate volunteers across 12 biotech companies

• Post-session feedback showed 1.4x increase in student interest to pursue STEM careers, 2.4x increase in students' knowledge of the biotech industry, and 70% of students reported the virtual sessions were highly engaging.

• Received verbal commitment from our industry partners to continue running similar programmatic models in-house.

• Won Grand Prize of $40K at Penn Milken Competition in 2021.

  
  

Takeaways

• The importance of getting principal support and building grass-roots support with teachers; my colleague and I got 7 districts to participate in our pilot during a time when schools were still unsure week-to-week whether the instruction was in-person or remote.

• Affirmed my belief that connecting the classroom to the real world is an instructional priority.

• How to design a comprehensive pre/post mixed-methods study that was still easy to implement.

• I could launch a project at this scale with less than a month lead time in planning and recruiting during a choatic, unpredictable period of schooling.