3 Linn County teachers bring their experiences with STEM externship back to their classrooms

Three Linn County teachers participated in the Iowa Governor’s science, technology, engineering and math externship last summer, bringing their experiences back to their classrooms.

Jefferson High School teacher Robert Brown II, North Linn High School teacher Dave Sattgast and Central City High School teacher Tracy Burds worked at conservation centers and the Iowa Department of Natural Resources during their six-week externship.

An externship is similar but shorter than an internship, with participants observing and networking with professionals, taking a tour of company facilities and sitting in on staff meetings.

Brown II externed at Johnson County Conservation and Kent Park, 2048 US-6, Oxford. He was part of the team responsible for water testing at 31 locations throughout the park and helped analyze the data collected from the sites to determine if rehabilitation of the watershed feeding the lake was successful.

Sattgast worked with the Iowa Department of Natural Resources.

Burds externed at Jones County Conservation, assisting with various programs hosted off-site and at the Nature Center. She created geocaches as well as compass courses throughout the park.

The geocaches will offer a treasure-hunt style experience by providing GPS coordinates to find a specific location. The compass courses will provide a list of directions that require the use of a compass to navigate a course.

While teachers learn to show students the link between state academic standards and available jobs and needed skills, extern hosts find the help they need to complete significant projects that bring value to the organization, according to a news release.

“By matching teachers’ skills and abilities to the goals of extern hosts, we’ve found a tremendous return on the investment of time and effort put into the externship for both the teachers and hosts,” said Jason Lang, program manager of the STEM Teacher Externships Program.

“Our focus is providing teachers with hands-on experience that will enhance their classroom curriculum and highlight the skills required in a workplace setting,” Lang said in a news release.

The program aims to help Iowa educators bring additional experience to their classrooms by providing the opportunity to work side-by-side with industry professionals. Teachers can then take the real-life examples they have learned and apply them to their science, technology, engineering and math curriculum.

By finding matches in the local community, school-business partnerships can develop and last through the following school year and beyond. This ultimately helps make students more aware of the skills needed to fill the jobs right where they live.

Sixty-six teachers across the state were matched with local science, technology, engineering and math workplaces for the 13th year of the program.

More than 700 externship experiences have been organized through the program since 2009, said Meghan Lang, externship program coordinator.

“There has been great success in communicating the critical role of STEM in the workplace to our future workforce by creating these partnerships between teachers and businesses,” Meghan Lang said.

Since its first cohort, the program has been partly funded by grants from the National Science Foundation, the Iowa Economic Development Authority, the Iowa Department of Natural Resources REAP-CEP, and Google, along with cost-share investments by Iowa business and industry partners. This year’s contributions from workplace hosts totals approximately $90,000 in addition to the STEM Council’s investment.

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