Saint Louis Science Center Receives Boeing Grant to Support the YES STEMtastic Camp

The Saint Louis Science Center is thrilled to announce a generous $100,000 grant award from The Boeing Company to help fund our nationally recognized Youth Exploring Science (YES) Program and YES’s new STEMtastic Camp program this summer.

“We are grateful for the funding from Boeing Global Engagement Grant and the significant support it will provide in bringing innovative STEM learning to under-resourced students in our community,” says Siinya Williams, senior director of Community Science for the Science Center. “Programs like these are fundamental to the Science Center’s mission to ignite and sustain lifelong science and technology learning in our community.”

Boeing’s support will help sustain the Science Center’s impactful STEM educational programs, which bring engaging, project-based science and technology learning opportunities to youth with limited access to high-quality, out-of-school learning experiences. The YES Program helps prepare under-resourced high school students for graduation, college and future careers through informal, hands-on STEM programs and experiences.

Funding will support the YES Program’s Aerospace and Engineering components—fields particularly important to the St. Louis community’s need for a well-educated and STEM-skilled workforce. These popular and impactful components—two of six components in the YES Program—bring a greater awareness of the rich and extensive history of aviation in St. Louis and the well-documented need for delivering technology-savvy college graduates and technicians to fill the workforce pipeline.

(Read about some of the ways the YES Teens in the Aerospace and Engineering components prepared for this new program.)

The Boeing Global Engagement Grant will support the YES Program’s STEMtastic Camp, a program that will provide free STEM learning experiences for hundreds of underserved elementary school students attending summer school in the University City and Riverview Gardens school districts. Both districts are located in underserved communities, and both are Title 1 schools, making the STEMtastic Camp an important tool in encouraging diversity in STEM occupations and supporting STEM learning for young people from demographics that are historically underrepresented in science and technology fields.

This program builds upon a successful pilot of the program—also made possible by Boeing—in the University City school district during the summer of 2021, which reached approximately 240 community members.

In the program, YES Teens—many of whom are African American and from low-income areas of St. Louis themselves—plan the curriculum and hands-on STEM activities, as well as lead the programming that demonstrates for these young learners just how much of their lives, interests and experiences connect with STEM. Students will utilize dynamic flight, space, computer and technology programming to participate in projects about space and flight, followed by later activities delving into coding, how computers are assembled and more.

The Science Center wishes to thank The Boeing Company once again for their generous support for the YES Program and the mission of the Saint Louis Science Center.