CHALLENGING THE STATUS QUO STEM2HUB’s Success Credited to Leadership, Vision, Passion and aWillingness toSet andMeet ‘Unreasonable Expectations’
By Alyssa Briggs
Gary Chartrand grew up as the middle child in a farming family where he was the first to go to college, the first to leave his hometown of Bedford, N.H. and the first to credit his early life with the professional success he has realized.
Chartrand, executive chairman and former president of Acosta, said his years of plowing fields, chopping and splitting wood, growing and harvesting corn, caring for chickens and disposing of their waste is why he developed a work ethic.
That work ethic, coupled with what he calls “unreasonable” expectations and passionate and driven colleagues, fueled the growth of Acosta, a food sales and marketing company he helped nurture from a small regional company to a blockbuster organization with revenue of about $1 billion per year. In many respects, Chartrand’s story closely mirrors the trajectory of STEM2 Hub, the Northeast Florida ecosystem that has grown from a big idea into a national model for how to bring together business leaders, educators, non-profits, and others to improve opportunities for children and to create viable STEM pathways.
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY The STEM2 Hub sprang from a big idea and a few committed partners to an ecosystem that is now regularly serving more than 100,000 students. This is the story of a handful of visionary leaders, a willingness to change course, and the determination to challenge the status quo. The relationship between growth in STEM education and innovation have been tied to the future needs of the economy. Hundreds of thousands of unfilled jobs in STEM professions, especially computer science, can have a profound impact on generational poverty in many communities if underserved students are given the knowledge and skills to engage in these careers. A growing body of research that links STEM education to massive economic gains are driving the work of the STEM Learning Ecosystems Community of Practice, SLECoP. Launched by the STEM Funders Network and TIES in 2015, the STEM Learning Ecosystems has grown rapidly throughout the United States and the world. As of October 2019, there will be 89 ecosystems serving an estimated 35 to 40 million students worldwide. This growth has been fueled by a growing and demonstrated understanding that collaboration among diverse cross-sector stakeholders who share the same goals around the promise of STEM actually works. Other factors are also driving the interest in and expansion of the SLECoP, including the five-year report from the U.S. Office of Science, Technology Policy listing the formation of STEM ecosystems as the most promising pathway for students to find success in STEM. The STEM2 Hub, also launched in 2015, is a strong example of the work that can be accomplished through an ecosystem approach. By studying the origins of STEM2 Hub, coupled with an examination
of its internal operations, a blueprint emerges that can be useful for others who seek a collaborative approach to proliferating STEM throughout communities. The examination of STEM2 Hub, entirely qualitative, uses an ethnographic narrative approach, coupled with historical narrative. STEM2 Hub, which serves the northeast Florida region, based out of Jacksonville, Fla., is committed to accelerating the growth of STEM education and careers. With a strong focus on coding and robotics along with science, math, design and engineering, the ecosystem has engaged dozens of partners, launched numerous successful initiatives and now stands as a model for other regions who want to harness collective action for common good. The following pages outline the history of STEM2 Hub’s evolution. The quick story: • The ecosystem formed in 2015 when Florida had 27,000 jobs in computer science for which there were no qualified applicants. • Gary Chartrand, executive chairman and former president of Acosta Foods, realized that something dramatic was needed to reimagine education in Northwest Florida. • Chartrand recruited business leaders from various sectors representing the business community to join the initiative. • Executive Director Kathleen Schofield, building upon the foundation set by her predecessors, Wanyoni Kendrick and Robert Copeland, is actualizing the vision set by Chartrand as evidenced by the explosive growth, both during out-of-school and summer programs, as well as through the infusion of STEM programs into the school day.
CHALLENGING THE STATUS QUO
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