Clear Lake Area Chamber Of Commerce: Clear Lake Connections Podcast Episode 58 | Building The S.T.E.M Workforce Of Tomorrow.

Press release from the Clear Lake Area Chamber Of Commerce:

March 4, 2022

This week on Clear Lake Connections Podcast presented by UTMB Health: Meet Brandy Gates, Director of Development at the Chemical Education Foundation. In this week’s episode, Brandy discusses the work the Chemical Education Foundation does to get Kindergarten through Eighth Graders more interested in STEM, the free learning resources that they provide on their website and how their engaging curriculum has been able to give more children accessibility to ignite their love for these subjects. Brandy also talks about how she has a passion for this organization and how now you can work STEM into almost everything.

CEF is a thirty-year-old nonprofit organization that is based out of the Virginia/Washington DC Area. She is the first fully remote employee here in Texas and they also hired on another Texan as an Education Manager. The chemical industry is so predominant in our are so it makes sense for them to be here. They help kindergarteners through eight grade students and teachers become more comfortable and excited about science and stem careers. They typically work with chemical distributor companies, and they also add new industries which is a bring reason why they came into the Houston market. They want to bring in Petrochemical but also medical industries and other additional industries that they have not tapped into yet.

This organization caught her eye because she is being able to show these kids their pathway and it opens the world and seeing their eyes light up is a reward and makes her happy. Some of the major partnerships they are working with right now are Brenteg, DOW, PNG and want to branch out into aerospace organizations along with medial and petrochemical like the organizations of Shell and Exxon that they already work with. There is a great opportunity to get involved. It is the perfect time to be in this area and connect with students and teachers.

The focus that drives them is to “build the stem workforce of tomorrow” and to do this we have to get kids interested in science, technology engineering and math early. The earlier the better. Most programs that focus on stem education focus on high school and college, but CEF really wants to get to the kids when they’re young, get the involved with hands on science activities in the classroom. They provide free resources on their website which is chemed.org and they offer downloadable, hands-on science activities that kids can do in the classroom so teachers can log on and download them or parents who are homeschooling can download them as well. They also offer free continuing education for teachers. They have virtual and in person workshops. They have the information available on their website. They currently have their ‘You Be the Chemist’ opportunity going on and they are going to be meeting for a ‘quiz bowl’ type event in June here in Houston. They are hoping to get girls more involved in STEM. Their numbers have gone up over the years which is an increase in involvement. At these events they have the opportunity to win scholarships so if they plan on going the STEM route in college, they will have these scholarships earning credit and interest. The big STEM careers range right now, they need every industry from all sectors to work these jobs.

They build this engaging curriculum by making fantastic hands-on activity guides and they create experiments that kids can do with regular everyday items. A lot of times they provide the kids with the materials they need but its anything from making slime, creating exploding bags and all these other different kinds of activities that they can have fun with. When they don’t know that these opportunities are available, that’s when they come in. They are all about access and opportunity. Being able to have the accessibility to this can ignite that love for science that they may have never had before.

This press release was produced by the Clear Lake Area Chamber Of Commerce. The views expressed here are the author’s own.