EXPLR’s National STEM Festival
One of the Top 20 Most Influential Projects of 2024
For making STEM learning more accessible, fun and impactful
Region: North America Sector: Education UN SDGs: 4, Quality Education; 10, Reduced Inequalities
Jenny Buccos, co-founder of National STEM Festival, was busy running EXPLR, an online educational platform for tweens and teens, when her colleague, Kari Byron, former host of the hit TV show MythBusters, came to her with a project challenge. It was March 2023, and Byron had just returned from hosting a livestream for South by Southwest’s (SXSW) education track. During an interview with then U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona, she threw down a challenge in front of a live audience — and he’d accepted.
During the Obama Administration, Byron had collaborated with the White House Science Fair, which sought to nurture the talent of the next generation of engineers, innovators, mathematicians, and scientists. When President Barack Obama’s term ended, so did the fair. Byron was heartbroken. “She loved that the White House Science Fair celebrated kids being amazing for something other than sports,” Buccos says, “and she went on a multi-year campaign to revive it.”
That brings us back to SXSW and Byron’s challenge to Cardona.
“Why has there been no national science fair since Obama?” she asked. Moments later, Byron secured an on-camera commitment from Cardona to revive the national science fair concept — this time, to be called the National STEM Festival — and she was calling Buccos because she needed help. She and Buccos immediately went all in on holding the Department of Education (DOE) to Cardona’s promise. It took them 90 days to develop a Memorandum of Understanding with the DOE, and in just over a year, they’d pull off the fast-tracked, multi-stakeholder, nearly $3 million-budget project called the National STEM Festival.
While elements of their jobs at EXPLR prepared them to organize the National STEM Festival, Buccos, who took on the project management role, said she’d never executed something quite as ambitious or as meaningful as the national event. “From big budgeting, to hiring every vendor and making sure every volunteer was cleared to be around children, to selecting overall programming and vision… we needed to build that book, to determine what the process looked like,” she said.
As project manager and co-director of the National STEM Festival, Buccos found herself leading a team of 18 federal agencies, philanthropic and corporate partners, volunteer judges, STEM-field mentors, and production specialists who assisted with logistics. But while she was managing all the tasks that would be required to execute a project whose signature event would last just 48 hours, she was also thinking about the stakeholders who mattered most to her — the kids — and how to structure the most meaningful experience for them.
“I’ve spent the past 20 years thinking about kids,” she says, explaining that she and Byron wanted the National STEM Festival to challenge the idea of the traditional science fair. They wanted to “start engaging the kids in the back of the classroom,” the ones who may not have the resources or support to be able to carry out complex projects and, especially, the ones who may not be able to travel to a national-level fair. A press release or tweet, Buccos says, wasn’t going to cut it when it came to reaching those kids and inviting them to submit projects to the National STEM Festival. “You’re going to get the same kids who always participate in science fairs,” she explains. “We wanted to get out of the silo.”
To do that, Buccos, Byron, and their team worked the phones, contacting 1,000+ community-based organizations to tell them about the festival and to ask how they could reach the “back-of-classroom" kids. These community-based partners were key to spreading the word, and the National STEM Festival issued a call for submissions during the August 2023 back-to-school period. They also communicated with districts and schools directly, especially those in states and from communities that are traditionally underrepresented in science fairs.
The accelerated timeline didn’t give kids much time to polish their submissions, but that didn’t stop 2,549 of them from submitting projects. And these weren’t your typical baking soda volcano science fair submissions — more like growing mealworms in your bedroom to see if they can digest single-use plastics and then be safely marketed as a food source for people. One thousand volunteer judges reviewed submissions; each project was reviewed by at least three judges, and all applicants received feedback. The total submission pool was narrowed down to 146 kids who were invited to present their projects at the National STEM Festival in spring 2024 in Washington, D.C., where they would receive more feedback and mentorship, and meet investors and other STEM stakeholders.
How does a 48-hour event make long-term, structural change in education? Well, it gives kids a literal seat at the table with innovators, funders, and scientists. The opportunity to connect with them… is life-changing.
How does a 48-hour event make long-term, structural change in education? Well, it gives kids a literal seat at the table with innovators, funders, and scientists. The opportunity to connect with them… is life-changing.
How does a 48-hour event make long-term, structural change in education? Well, it gives kids a literal seat at the table with innovators, funders, and scientists. The opportunity to connect with them… is life-changing.
How does a 48-hour event make long-term, structural change in education? Well, it gives kids a literal seat at the table with innovators, funders, and scientists. The opportunity to connect with them… is life-changing.
The key to success, Buccos says, was the Festival’s commitment to ensuring that every child whose project was selected would receive the financial support to ensure they and one parent or guardian could attend. From flights and hotel accommodations to ground transportation and meals, families didn’t need to worry whether they could afford to participate.
It was the first time traveling far from home for many participants; for at least one student from New Mexico, the trip was his first time on an airplane. Students were able to connect with movers and shakers in the STEM space (even NASA engineers!) and plan future collaborations with them. Kids had unforgettable experiences, Buccos says, not just at the fair, but once they returned home, too.
“You treated me like a celebrity,” one student wrote in a post-Festival survey. “My school’s science club had 3 members before [the National STEM Festival]. When I got home, it had more than 100.”