Iowa STEM Teacher Externships Forum highlights school, workplace partnerships

Iowa STEM Teacher Externships Program participants gathered in Ankeny on July 22 for the Iowa STEM Teacher Externships Forum, an annual event that serves as a celebration of the summer’s accomplishments and jumping off point for further collaboration and partnerships among externs, workplace hosts and program mentors.

View highlights from this year’s Iowa STEM Teacher Externship Program forum in our Flickr event photo gallery

The event featured several breakout sessions in which externs and hosts showcased their experiences this summer along with remarks from Iowa STEM Teacher Externships Program Coordinator Ann Gritzner and Iowa Governor’s STEM Advisory Council Co-Chair Diane Young.

“What makes this program transformational is that you don't come back with just stories. You come back with perspective,” Young said. “You come back understanding how engineers solve problems under pressure. How laboratory scientists ensure food safety. How manufacturers use data to improve efficiency. How healthcare professionals rely on technology and analytics.
How innovation actually happens. And when you bring those experiences back into your classrooms, students begin to see possibilities they never saw before.”

An externship includes working alongside industry experts at a local STEM workplace, collaboration with fellow teacher externs via online discussion boards and assignments culminating in a final project the teachers can take back to their classroom in the fall and share with other Iowa educators.

“[The Externships Forum] was wonderful to connect with other teachers and discuss their experiences this summer,” said Harley Doty, mathematics teacher at South Tama County High School and 2026 Iowa STEM Teacher Extern at Bayer. “It was really nice to hear from host speakers on their perspectives of the program. I really appreciated being able to put faces to the names of people on the discussion boards all summer.”

This summer, 95 externs were placed with 78 unique Iowa workplace hosts for six-week long experiences that connect teachers to professionals in local workplaces, providing opportunities to gain valuable STEM-related work experiences that can be applied in the classroom. Since its launch in 2009, the Iowa Governor’s STEM Advisory Council at the Iowa Department of Education has facilitated more than 1,100 teacher externships in a variety of industries throughout the state.

The Iowa STEM Teacher Externship Program is already preparing for next year’s externship experiences. To learn more about how to participate next summer, either as a teacher or a workplace host, visit the Externships Program webpage.