STARBASE Minnesota, Inc. inspires students to aim high

Each year for over three decades, thousands of Minnesota middle schoolers have been preparing to go to Mars. None of them has made it (yet), but thanks to the experience almost all of them have increased their technology awareness, learned new skills, and discovered new interests in Science, Technology, Engineering and Math, the so-called STEM fields.

Helping Minnesota students explore STEM is the mission of STARBASE Minnesota, Inc., the non-profit behind five-day immersion programs held throughout the year at the Air National Guard bases in the Twin Cities and Duluth and one of the organizations supported by the Xcel Energy Foundation. The program is designed around a hypothetical Mars mission, with students engaging in hands-on activities that touch on physics, biology, design, chemistry and more.

Founded in 1993 to deliver the Department of Defense-backed STARBASE curriculum, STARBASE Minnesota, Inc. today also provides curriculum kits, mentoring and scholarships to help kids – and Minnesota’s future workforce.

“We are so lucky in this state to have such strong STEM industries, but they need skilled professionals. Are we as a state going to be able to meet that need in the future?” asked Melanie Peters, executive director of STARBASE Minnesota, Inc. “We exist to expose more students to opportunities in STEM, to cast that wider net and make students aware of what is possible for them in their own communities.”

A National Program with a Local Twist

The STARBASE program was piloted in Michigan in the early 1990’s. Its success caught the attention of the Department of Defense, which saw the program’s potential to promote STEM studies.

Since its founding a few years later, STARBASE Minnesota, Inc. has grown into a cornerstone of STEM education in the state through its partnership with the Minnesota Air National Guard, serving thousands of students each year from its locations in St. Paul and Duluth.

The flagship offering is the DoD STARBASE program, a free, five-day immersive experience for fifth graders. Students are bussed to the Air National Guard facility where they engage in hands-on STEM activities. They might design a space station using advanced computer-aided design (CAD) software, learn the principles of physics by building and launching model rockets, or explore coding by programming robots. The curriculum is aligned with state standards but presented in a way that feels more like exploration than schoolwork.

“Every activity that students do while they’re at STARBASE is connected to growth in STEM career skills, teamwork, creativity, and perseverance,” Peters said. Afterwards, students are surveyed on what they found interesting, and then watch videos of local people in STEM-related jobs that use those skills or knowledge they just learned.

Understanding that not every school can participate in the on-site program, as a non-profit organization, STARBASE Minnesota, Inc. secured funding to offer free STEM kits across Minnesota, providing teachers with the materials and curriculum needed to bring 23 hands-on science and engineering challenges into their own classrooms.

“We recognize the demands on fifth grade teachers, so we try to make this as comprehensive and as easy to execute as possible,” Peters said. “Every student has an orange bag that has all the supplies that they need. We have had such an overwhelmingly positive response to this curriculum.”

To support long-term success, STARBASE Minnesota, Inc. also offers an after-school mentoring program that goes deeper and culminates in a visit to corporate partners to see STEM in action. Also available are scholarships to program alumni who are pursuing post-secondary education in STEM fields. This helps bridge the gap between early inspiration and a career.

Between the in-person programs in Duluth and St. Paul, the program reaches between 6,700 and 6,900 students each year. The kits extend the reach even further and were implemented in 82 of 87 Minnesota counties during a recent school year. STARBASE Minnesota, Inc. estimates it reaches about half of fifth grade students in Minnesota annually.

The program constantly evolves to keep up with advances in the sciences and technology, Peters said. In the coming year, the program will explore ways to expand its reach to more students, perhaps even to high school students, and will focus on securing funding sources. (The program isn’t currently included in Minnesota’s upcoming budget; in the past state funds have helped cover the costs of the kits.)

But for all the changes, what remains is the group’s dedication to the students – and joy when they see real-world results. “A former student came through the STARBASE program with one of the St. Paul Public Schools as a fifth grader,” Peters recalls. “He later applied for one of our scholarships and received it. He now has graduated, works as a mechanical engineer, and he’s now featured in one of our STEM career videos. It’s such a great, full circle moment.”