It takes a community to develop the talent Milwaukee needs for the 21st century. The current talent pipeline is too fragmented to have meaningful impact on industry’s needs for well educated, diverse talent. Educators and students alike recognize the value of collaboration with industry professionals — for the expertise and experience they can share while involved in projects, to broaden students’ views of what’s possible in Milwaukee, and to inspire students to a higher level of work and engagement.
How you can get involved
Education is changing before our eyes. There are many more ways in which your company or your individual employees can have real impact in the education of next generation’s talent. Below is just a sampling of the types of engagement we’ve helped arrange for the schools and teachers we’ve worked with. If any or several of these options appeal to you and you’d like to explore how these could work for your company, please get in touch with us using the form below.
Join educators in a Collab Lab
Our Collab Lab series brings K-12 educators from throughout the region together with partners from industry, nonprofits and higher-ed. With these monthly discussions/workshops we aim for participants to uncover opportunities to engage students in collaborative, real-world work. Every session topic draws a unique mix of individuals who are is eager both to share and act on ideas. To date, we’ve pulled in over 500 participants who come from public, private, and charter schools throughout greater Milwaukee and more than 100 outside organizations.
Participate as an Industry Mentor or Advisor
We tap industry expertise in both the design and execution of projects that are designed during our STEM Studio process. If your employees are looking for a chance to not only give back, but to see students do cool things, let us know, and we can find a place to plug them in. Options include: being part of the design process, reviewing designs for ways to plug in: mentoring, guest lecture, field experience (for students OR teachers!), etc.
Host a field experience for teachers or students
The impact of student learning of a well planned visit to a university lab, a modern workplace or a site of interest in the community can not be underestimated. The project framework teachers that we coach use creates the context for a more meaningful and relevant field experience. Your chance to show students the exciting opportunities to be involved with challenging work in the community to grow up in.
How to support our work with educators
Become an Industry Partner
Industry partners are a key component of our vision to build a sustainable foundation to a 21st century talent pipeline. You can help build the pipeline of teachers offering learning experiences that develop the talent Milwaukee’s community and its industry needs. Our relationship focused approach of the program provides students and teachers a unique perspective on your company, and the people in associated with it. This enhanced approach gives students a glimpse of what they might want to become in a way that career fairs, mock interviews, and drop in for a day programming cannot.
Sponsor a Collab Lab
Collab Labs build community. Our goal with hosting Collab Lab is to provide opportunities to network across typical silos, explore a topic and its application to education in a workshop-style approach, generate awareness and empathy for ways of addressing challenges attendees may not be familiar with, etc. Collab Labs are offered 7 times during the school year and attract an average of 30 attendees from the larger Milwaukee area.
Sponsor a teacher attending STEM Studio
We use a studio format to engage educators and community partners in a collaborative design process to create and pilot real-world projects with the potential to scale across schools and grade levels with network effects. STEM Studio introduces a standardized approach to constructing a long duration project framework that helps teachers integrate offering traditional academic and 21st century skills, real world connection points with industry to generate students’ interest in domains of work and the numerous variations of roles in them. Industry support and participation are key to making participation happen for many teachers.
How would you like to get involved?
Let’s get a conversation started.
