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Copeland said STEM2 Hub’s work was critical for helping to address the talent shortage and the pipeline challenges that were plaguing the region. Copeland worked directly with businesses who were struggling to find staff for vacant positions. “Consistently, the colleges would place all of their students and I still had companies in need of talent,” he said. Copeland knew that STEM2 Hub had to take its work all of the way back to elementary schools so that they would be able to feed middle schools with STEM- interested students who, in turn would feed high schools. “The talent wasn’t coming out of high schools and we had to change that,” he said. He knew there was the need to partner with local school systems. KEY PROGRAMMING Copeland said two of his favorite initiatives of STEM2 Hub were the Bicycle Club and expanding the First LEGO League Robotics program – both out-of-school-time initiatives with strong connections to goals of traditional school day classrooms. STEM2Hub borrowed the idea for the Bicycle Club from Cincinnati, another ecosystem in the STEMLearning Ecosystems Community of Practice. Students acquire STEM skills andmodel the engineering design process by breaking down and reassembling a bicycle, solving problems and discoveringmath and science principles at work. Simultaneously, competitive robotics programs were beginning to take a stronghold in the region with Clay County School District developing teams, with the birth of Renaissance Jax and its Duval County robotics program. RENAISSANCE JAX – A REGIONAL STRUCTURE A young engineer, Mark McCombs, had been a student of Copeland’s when he taught at Stanton High School in Duval County. Mark went on to the University of North Florida, where he graduated with an engineering degree. Mark decided that he would forgo the high salary opportunities of working as an engineer to, instead, bring to life his vison of access to robotics for students in Northeast Florida. He started Renaissance Jax to ensure that all students had an opportunity to participate on a robotics team, the same way that he had.
Chartrand said the business leaders realized that it was time to pull together to do something about the region’s once-failing schools. “The public system here, specifically in the urban core, was having a very difficult time. They were really poor and they were breeding chronically failing schools and students – Ds and Fs year after year. They were dropout factories and students weren’t getting the educations that they needed to succeed in the current environment and we wanted to change that,” he said. RESOLUTELY UNREASONABLE STEM2 Hub was born with a few guiding principles, drawn directly from Chartrand’s practiced philosophy regarding life and work: • Don’t accept the status quo; • March confidently into the discomfort zone; • Remain resolutely unreasonable to achieve progress. FOUNDING EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR With a board of 15, a bold vision and mission, a little funding, buy-in from critical partners and a never- ending determination, STEM2 Hub was organized as a non-profit in 2015. Its first executive director, Wanyoni Kendrick, came on and helped build the board of directors and establish STEM2 Hub as a non-profit. Kendrick led the region through a SWOT analysis, meeting with leaders from each sector, identifying strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. One of STEM2 Hub’s first large public acts in 2015 was to host a convening of 300 stakeholders from around the region to reveal findings of the SWOT analysis. Kendrick stayed in the position of director of STEM2 Hub until 2016, leaving to return to the corporate sector. STEM2 Hub’s TECHNOLOGIST After Kendrick left, Chartrand and the board conducted a search and found Rob Copeland, an electrical engineer who holds a master’s degree from Stanford University. “Gary and the board were interested in taking a strong tech position. And that’s what I am – a technologist,” Copeland said. “Our goal was to ensure that education was fulfilling the workforce need.” Copeland said STEM2 HubwantedNortheast Florida to become known as a technology center, much like Silicon Valley in California or the Research Triangle inNorth Carolina.
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