State STEM Advocacy 

State STEM Advocacy falls into four categories: Direct Appeals, Legislative Tracking, In-Person Appeals, and Local Appeals.

  • Direct Appeals include initiatives such as writing letters or making phone calls to legislators, advocating for state STEM funding for programs such as FRC and robotics education.

  • Legislative Tracking would include following new legislation and advocating for or against it with lawmakers and in the public interest.

  • In-Person Appeals would involve personal visits with state legislators in order to share information. 

  • Local Appeals would include outreach to the mayor, council, county officials, or school board representatives to advocate for STEM funding and robotics education.

Phase I: Letters and Calls to State Legislators

Collaterals: Written Letter, Talking Points, List of Legislator Contacts for Email/Phone

Legislative Tracking: Set up alerts to follow lawmaker activities during the legislative session

Cost: Slight, unless letters are mailed


EXAMPLE LETTER:

​​Dear Congressman/woman [Insert Name}:

Thank you for giving us the opportunity to email you today [if that is how you are reaching out].  We appreciate the time that you took out of your busy schedule to talk to us about the need for after school STEM engagement programs.

We appreciate the work your office has done over the years to help support education, science and technology and in particular supporting the excellent universities in our state.  As we mentioned in our meeting, the need for after school STEM enrichment programs is significant.  We have students who drive 45 minutes each way to Colfax on a regular basis just to participate in FIRST robotics.  Even though the FIRST program has grown significantly in North Carolina in the last 5 years, it still has a long way to go.  The only way to encourage students to pursue STEM careers is through some degree of federal support.  As we discussed in our meeting, there is a significant STEM worker gap in the United States that will not be filled if weak levels of support continue.  The FIRST program has done a lot on its own: we have 400,000 students currently participating in the various levels of FIRST with 100,000 volunteers who last year donated 10,000,000 hours of their time to help these students.  On top of that, over $20 million in scholarships is currently available to students who participate in FIRST programs.  The educational institutions in North Carolina alone provide a number of scholarships in science and engineering to FIRST alumni.  However, if we are to meet the challenge of providing one million STEM workers by 2022, we will not get there without additional federal support. 

We believe that funding for after school STEM programs is a key ingredient to encouraging students to pursue STEM careers.  FIRST has a 25-year history and a proven track record of success in encouraging students to pursue STEM-related careers.   However, irrespective of how good the program is, many schools simply can’t afford the price tag.  As we discussed in our meeting, a FIRST program costs between $5,000 and $20,000 to start in a high school.  Additionally, there is a need to compensate teachers for their participation in these after school programs.  In many schools the football coach and his assistants receive stipends for their work but a teacher who wants to start a STEM club to encourage students to pursue STEM careers cannot find funding.  There are over 1,000 high schools in North Carolina but only 5% currently have a FIRST high school robotics program.   The program allows students to work side-by-side with engineers, scientists and mathematicians in situations similar to what might be encountered in the real world.  They work with equipment and software that is used in industry today.   Further, evidence shows that over 90% of the students who participate in these programs go on to pursue STEM education.  While we cannot deny the need for good, highly motivated, and well compensated teachers, we hope that you can support the need to give those teachers the tools necessary to help our students succeed.   We can’t just teach students about fishing, we need to enable our schools and teachers to show students how it is done.

In our meeting, we asked two things.  First, that you and fellow congressmen and women and senators find a way to break any stalemates and reauthorize the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) and with it find funding for after school STEM enrichment programs such as FIRST.   We realize your efforts in supporting educational causes in Congress; however, as you know, more needs to be done so that we can get on go further in the process of providing resources to educate our students and to build a workforce for the future to fill the STEM worker gap we discussed in our meeting.  In today’s economy every student needs to have a strong foundation in the science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) subjects in order to land and succeed in virtually any job.   Only 45 percent of U.S. high school graduates are ready for college work in math and only 30 percent are ready in science.  This disturbing reality should be addressed in our nation’s landmark federal K-12 education law.  

Second, while we appreciate that both the House and Senate are working on versions of the ESEA reauthorization legislation currently only the bipartisan Franken-Kirk-Murray proposal in the Senate would provide STEM directed funding.  That proposal, offered as a Title II STEM Amendment, would permit funding supporting participation of low income students in nonprofit competitions related  to STEM subjects and would provide each state with formula base funding to support partnerships between local schools, businesses, universities and non-profit organizations.   Therefore, we ask for your support for that amendment or to support for the inclusion of similar legislation should the ESEA reauthorization end up in conference committee.

In closing, again we appreciate your taking the time to meet with us and the opportunity to talk to you about the FIRST program and the need for after school STEM enrichment programs.  When you are back in your district we would certainly welcome the opportunity to continue this discussion at your convenience.  If there is any additional information that we can provide you or your office, please don’t hesitate to ask. 

Finally, as we mentioned, there is a district competition held in North Carolina in March.  We would like to invite you or your staff to come by and visit the competition and see firsthand what these programs do at high school level.  In addition, as the competition season starts in the fall, there will be opportunities to visit competitions for FIRST Lego League (the middle school portion of the FIRST program).  Finally we participate in charitable events, do robot demonstration and hold various STEM training events throughout the year.  We would welcome your visit to one of those competitions or other events so you can see how it encourages these students to continue to pursue science into high school and beyond.  Should you or your staff have any questions about the program or if we can provide any other information, please contact us. We would welcome the opportunity to meet with you while you are back home in North Carolina and talk to you further about the FIRST program and the need for after school STEM enrichment programs.  We can give you real life examples of how this program is helping North Carolina students succeed in college and beyond

Kindest Regards

For FIRST Team 2655, Inc.

The Flying Platypi

Joshua Hutchins, President


Thank you mentors, your donations of time and knowledge does not go unnoticed by the Midtown community!