
Funded by the National Science Foundation, the Mobile Making Program aims to develop a research-based model for supporting and evaluating a making-centered afterschool STEM program for different social, cultural, and socioeconomic settings. This project brings STEM-based making to local middle schools by taking equipment, supplies and undergraduate students who major in a STEM field at CSUSM ("STEM Ambassadors") to after school program sites.
Currently, CRESE has established after school STEM making clubs at 12 middle schools in Vista, San Marcos, and Escondido, as well as one community center in Vista. Teams of STEM Ambassadors visit these sites each week to engage students in design-based, DIY activities such as building basic robots with toothbrushes and cell phone motors, making solar-powered vehicles from recycled materials, powering motors and buzzers with conductive play dough, creating electronic textiles with microcontrollers and conductive thread, and creating unique designs with 3D printing pens. For more information, please contact the program director April Nelson at anelson@csusm.edu.
Funded by Nordson and Chevron, the iTeach STEM After School Program uses design thinking as a framework to engage upper elementary and middle school students to solve real world problems that are personally and socially meaningful to them using low and high tech tools such as circuity, coding, and robotics.
As part of the program, teacher candidates taking EDUC422 course (one of the three prerequisite courses to enter the credential program at CSUSM) learn STEM-based making activities in class with the course instructor and then implement these activities with children at various school sites in North County San Diego in groups. The program runs for seven consecutive sessions during Fall and Spring semester. Each session lasts for 90 minutes. Currently, the program is partnered with Oceanside and Escondido Unified School Districts, and serve 24 schools sites during the academic year. During summer, the program hosts summer camps on the CSUSM campus during the last two weeks of July.
For more information, please contact the program director Dr. Sinem Siyahhan at ssiyahhan@csusm.edu.