Responding to President’s Call to Action, US2020 Announces 7 Cities – including San Francisco – as Winners of its STEM Mentoring Competition at The White House Science Fair
City competition winners announced as part of multi-year campaign to boost STEM mentorship across the country; Techbridge is a key delivery partner.
WASHINGTON, DC – At the White House Science Fair responding to President Obama’s call to action to get more girls and boys engaged in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM), US2020 announced seven cities, including San Francisco, as the winners of a national competition to encourage mentoring in STEM.
Sponsored by Cisco and launched at the Clinton Global Initiative, the US2020 City Competition challenged cities to develop innovative models for dramatically increasing the number of STEM professionals mentoring and teaching students through hands-on projects. US2020 is specifically focused on increasing STEM opportunities and STEM excitement for girls, underrepresented minorities and children from low-income families. Public/private coalitions from 52 cities across the nation applied, engaging nearly 600 companies and civic organizations.
The 7 winning city coalitions, representing over 200 companies and organizations, are:
- Allentown, PA; Chicago, IL; Indianapolis, IN; Philadelphia, PA; Research Triangle Park, NC; San Francisco, CA; Wichita, KS
The winners will share $1million in financial, consulting and staff support over the next year to launch their plans, including:
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- Communications consulting and training with Discovery Communications;
- Funds to hire a local project manager;
- Cohorts of capacity-building AmeriCorps VISTA members;
- Access to US2020’s state-of the-art volunteer matching platform, built in partnership by Tata Consultancy Services;
- Pro bono management consulting services; and
- Membership in the US2020 community of practice.
The plans developed by these seven cities represent some of the country’s most innovative thinking in engaging underrepresented and underserved youth in STEM. In San Francisco, eight of the eleven occupations with the largest projected growth before 2020 are in STEM fields. Yet, most students in San Francisco public schools have never met a STEM professional. SF US2020, led by UC San Francisco’s Science & Health Education Partnership in collaboration with the Mayor’s Office, San Francisco Unified School District, Salesforce, and Techbridge, will change that by forging partnerships to connect STEM role models with middle school students.
“One of my highest priorities as mayor is to make sure San Francisco’s youth receive a quality education, both in and out-of-school. We see the work of the US2020 directly complementing and strengthening my Middle School Leadership Initiative, and I am excited by the opportunity to increase STEM mentors who are working with our students and getting them ready for the jobs of the 21st Century” said Ed Lee, Mayor of San Francisco.
“Techbridge is proud to participate in this project. We know the importance of mentors in inspiring youth and helping them reimagine their futures in STEM. With our deep and extensive experience training STEM professionals for K-12 outreach, we are excited to partner with UCSF’s Science & Health Education Partnership to share our best practices and provide STEM mentors with the training and support needed to engage meaningfully with students. We want to make the experience impactful and positive for every student and mentor in San Francisco,” shared Linda Kekelis, CEO and Executive Director of Techbridge.
More information about San Francisco’s US2020 program can be found here:
http://us2020.org/city-competition/sanfrancisco
Cisco is a founding partner of US2020 and the official sponsor of the US2020 City Competition. Cisco continues to build upon its two-decade long commitment to STEM education, supporting major programs to develop a robust pipeline of students interested in entering STEM fields. As part of its commitment to US2020, Cisco has pledged that 20% of its U.S. workforce will volunteer 20 hours or more in STEM mentoring by 2020. In San Francisco, Salesforce.com is the founding sponsor of US2020.
US2020 emerged from a White House call to generate big, innovative solutions to our STEM education challenge. The city competition was designed to tap into the convening power of city leadership as well as the potential for national service to play a leading role in helping the nation address its STEM education needs. The Corporation for National and Community Service (CNCS), in partnership with US2020 and Citizen Schools, has made a total investment of 29 AmeriCorps VISTAs to do the important work of engaging communities in this STEM mentoring initiative. Nineteen of these capacity-builders will serve in the seven winning cities with two serving in SF.
US2020’s founding partners are Cisco, Cognizant, Raytheon, SanDisk and Tata Consultancy Services, now joined by Chevron, with additional support coming from Discovery Communications, Fidelity Investments, HP, Salesforce, the Carnegie Corporation of New York and the Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Foundation. Yesterday, new national US2020 partnerships were announced with Chevron and Discovery Communications as well as the Department of Energy.
About US2020
US2020 is a new organization formed through a partnership of leading education non-profits and corporate leaders in the STEM field. The long-term goal of the initiative is to mobilize 1 million STEM mentors annually by the year 2020, creating millions of moments of discovery – those life changing events when children launch rockets, build robots, write a computer program, or look into the farthest reaches of the universe. US2020 relies on a committed and growing community of public, private, non-profit and individual partners.