MESA looking for STEM professionals to serve as guest speakers

MESA would love to bring guest speakers into the classrooms for both middle school and high school MESA classes.

We could use your help in identifying and approaching STEM professionals who would be eager to share their knowledge and experiences with the students. 

Can you think about people you know who might be interested and then please have a discussion with them?  

We’d be looking for STEM professionals to share how they ended up in their position, the path they took to get there (education & experiences), the rewards and challenges of the position, any concrete or surprising ways they use their STEM skills at their job, etc.  The goal is to open the eyes of students to explore a wide variety of possibilities.  Keep in mind that when people think of STEM there are obvious careers that come to mind, but we’d also be interested in lesser-known careers that students might not know about.

Please reassure your volunteers that MESA and the Teachers are here to help facilitate the process and will be supervising the class.  Sarah and Curt want to emphasize that the kids are amazing and eager to learn and the teachers will make sure they are well behaved. Some people are reluctant to take on middle schoolers, but we think they’d have a good experience!

Once you confirm your colleague is open to the idea, we’d love to partner them with a MESA Teacher to choose a time and discuss if it’s a good fit for the class. 

We’d like to know things like:

  1. Contact information – email / phone
  2.  If they’d prefer to visit the class in-person (with school’s permission) or a virtual experience over Zoom or another platform
  3. How they’d prefer to present to the class, like a presentation-type format or more of a question/answer session.  This can be discussed and decided with the teacher and MESA staff can help with any of the details or talking points.
  4. Which grades the volunteer is comfortable with – middle or high school or both
  5. Position/Organization if they’re currently with one and maybe a brief description of what they do if the job title doesn’t explain it
  6. Clarification about which STEM disciplines they think their experience best aligns (science, tech, engineer, math, etc.) – that might help us place them with an appropriate class.  
  7. Contact: laura.hayes@wsu.edu