SUMMER Fellows 2025

Gaining Meaningful Experience Through Summer Program

About the Summer STEM Fellowship 

The Fellowship equips college students who are working in youth-serving summer programs with tools and training to deliver hands-on STEM activities, serve as mentors, and connect with youth. Fellows participate in in-person and virtual workshops to grow skills in youth development, facilitation, and STEM programming. We help to ensure that every Fellow can bring fresh ideas and energy to the communities where they’ll work in the summer and into the future. 

Near-peer mentors can make an outsized difference in young people’s lives. We believe that when college students return to their home communities, they add capacity, enthusiasm, and become powerful role models. The Summer STEM Fellowship is a great way to celebrate that opportunity. The Fellowship experience includes hands-on professional learning, a stipend, and modest funds to the programs where Fellows work to purchase materials to provide engaging STEM activities!

By the End of this Program, Fellows will: 

• Be able to apply new strategies that build connection, empathy, and joy among the youth they work with 
• Have increased confidence working with young people  
• Grown their own STEM identity by showing ways STEM shows up in their communities, effectively building a STEM sensor that buzzes at all potential learning opportunities 
• Have different strategies to integrate everyday STEM experiences into learning in ways that kids connect to and learn from

Program Schedule 

Spring: A one-day in-person training will be held Saturday, April 26 in Laramie at the Innovation Wyrkshop, a makerspace on the UW campus. Participants will build their network, learn about positive youth development, explore their STEM identities, and learn alongside the amazing Assistant Director of Training at the Program in Education, Afterschool, and Resiliency (PEAR) Jamaal Williams.  

Summer Professional Development: In May and June, up to six weekly virtual sessions will offer Fellows additional strategies for working with youth from fabulous experts in the field, reinforce and build on the in-person content, and continue to be a place for reflection and celebration of all that comes with working with youth. Virtual sessions will run between 60 and 90 minutes each. Some pre-work, group discussions, and other activities will be included. We will do our best to find a time that works for the programs that host Fellows to minimize time away from youth. 

Virtual session content will include:  

Effective facilitation strategies – such as: 

• Mentoring  
• Asking questions and active listening 

Youth development strategies – such as:

• STEM and lifeskills  
• Positive youth development  
• Experiential learning 

Positive STEM identity – both for the Fellow and youth in their care: 

• Working through own identity 
• Build brokering strategies  
• STEM content – place based, inquiry, real-world learning  

Fall: A one-day in-person closing session will be held in mid-August in Laramie before the beginning of UW’s fall semester to help Fellows celebrate their work and synthesize their experiences. We expect Jamaal to return for this session.