The Henry Cluster STEMM Foundation

Preparing Allied Gardens Children for Tomorrow 

An interview with Karen Miller

AlliedGardens.org: What is the Henry Cluster STEMM Foundation and what
does it mean for our community?

Karen Miller: The Henry Cluster STEMM Foundation is a group of parent, educator, and community member volunteers working together to enhance and expand on the science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and music/arts education in our local schools, specifically at Patrick Henry High School and the elementary and middle schools that feed into it. The Foundation also serves as a hub around which local STEM professionals (and musicians and other artists) can gather to support and encourage these students, in hopes that they will become better prepared academically (and more invested personally) to pursue these subjects after high school and to participate in STEM opportunities offered by regional universities and corporations. 

Students generally are not aware of or fully using these programs--such as the admissions advantage SDSU's School of Engineering grants to the students of Patrick Henry's Engineering Academy--and if we can better educate our community and our students about them, we can bring more of these resources to our neighborhoods.

And speaking in the broadest possible terms, promoting student success in science and technology leads to national success in the global marketplace. We need scientists and technology experts in almost every field--including the arts! It's a shame not to teach students as young as possible about the promise and excitement of these subjects, and we Foundation members want to help their teachers and parents expose Cluster students to them.

AlliedGardens.org: What compelled the Henry Cluster STEMM Foundation
folks to organize? Why now?

Karen Miller: The Henry Cluster STEMM Foundation grew out of the Henry Cluster Council, which was established by the San Diego Unified School District
(there are cluster councils for every high school in the district). The Council is composed of administrators, teachers, and parents from all eleven schools in the cluster (the high school and its feeder schools), who work together to discuss the issues that face the students within this educational community and to develop common goals for the schools. One of those goals was strengthening STEM education. The Henry Cluster Council can agree on STEM programs they would like to see, but they have only their school budgets to work from, and those budgets are quite tight. In November of 2012, parent Scott Bailey, then a member of the Cluster Council, was part of this conversation. He had seen how his children and their friends were not tapping into local STEM resources (through lack of awareness and preparation), and was inspired to create this Foundation to help the council reach these students and develop these programs. We added the second M (Music and the Arts) to reflect our belief that providing and supporting creative outlets for students is important, too. The Henry Cluster STEMM Foundation is a separate entity that can perform fundraising, and can focus all its energy on supporting these programs because it doesn't have to do the work of actually running a school at the same time! The Foundation can also invest in resources that can be shared among the schools of the Cluster, and serve as a conduit between the schools so they can share ideas and information, too.

AlliedGardens.org: You recently announced your first Henry Cluster STEMM Foundation charity event. Tell us about that.

Karen Miller: Our first STEMM Foundation event is not just a fundraiser; it is a community event that gives students the chance to put their STEM skills into action! On Saturday, May 31, 2014 we are creating a miniature golf course of holes designed by teams of students from each of the cluster schools. We'll make a whole day of it and invite the community to come play the course, have some lunch, maybe see some STEM exhibits and hear some student performances, and help us vote on which student-created golf holes should win prizes in a variety of categories. We can't wait to see what the students come up with! I'm sure it'll be a lot of fun for designers and players alike.

AlliedGardens.org: Sounds great! Promise to send us some pictures to post on our site?

Karen Miller: Of course!

AlliedGardens.org: Let's pretend it's now 2023, ten years from today. Describe how Allied Gardens and the Henry Cluster STEMM Foundation will have grown together.

Karen Miller: Well. Ten years from now we'll have current Allied Garden students established in their STEM professions who'll come back and serve as mentors for the kids still in school, because of Henry Cluster STEMM Foundation community events that forged inter-school relationships between the high school, middle schools, and elementary schools. The current crop of kindergarteners and first graders will be applying to colleges well-trained in STEM subjects, and more of them will be interested in STEM careers. Even the ones not interested in science or technology professions will have STEM tools at their disposal to use for all kinds of personal projects, even just for fun. Doesn't that sound nice? 

What I also hope happens is that our Foundation helps the schools in Allied Gardens and the rest of the Cluster community (San Carlos, Del Cerro) really see themselves as a unified population instead of a scattered grouping of kids and teachers. I hope that the teachers and administrators will turn to the Foundation when they need help implementing their ideas. I hope the Foundation becomes a real source of information and inspiration to the teachers and administrators, and can become a networking and collaborative resource as well as a source of funding. 

I think the Foundation can help the Cluster Council clarify their STEM goals and communicate them to the teachers and parents at the schools, and help businesses and professionals channel their interest in this STEM curriculum in ways to benefit all the students in the cluster. All the schools already have parent-teacher organizations working very hard for their own students. What we want to be is a parent-teacher-administrator-community organization that can bring all the students together with larger-scale projects that individual school communities cannot implement on their own.

AlliedGardens.org: What is the best way for someone in our community to become involved with the Henry Cluster STEMM Foundation? Would it require a lot of time?

Karen Miller: The absolute easiest way to become involved with the Foundation would be to "Like" our Facebook page or subscribe to email notifications from our website or follow us on Twitter, and then just talk to people you know about what we've got going on. If you wanted to be involved more directly, you could come to our monthly meetings (usually the fourth Tuesday of the month, but check the calendar on our website) or volunteer to help on one of our committees (like the miniature golf committee!). Depending on how much time you've got to give, you could spend more than one day a month helping us, but really it is something you decide. 

If you were interested more in partnering than planning, we need local professionals to serve as guest speakers, or mentors and project advisers (maybe you'd volunteer to make a presentation to student minigolf teams about designing an engineering project), and we appreciate donations of resources and services to help with student work or with Foundation business. Also, just talking to students about the fun parts of their STEM education and nurturing their interest in it helps us, too!

AlliedGardens.org: Anything else we should know?

Karen Miller: Our website is www.hcstemm.org. Our Facebook page is www.facebook.com/hcstemm. Our Twitter account is @hcstemm. We even have a LinkedIn company page! We think we are very lucky to be talking to AlliedGardens.org, and we are excited to grow with this community. We appreciate your interest! Thank you very much.