About

Objectives

This project harnesses the combined knowledge and experience of a dynamic team of educators, scientists, and community arts leaders to dramatically enrich middle and high school STEAM curricula for low-income, Latinx students. It encourages and equips individual students to pursue science and health careers while also raising community awareness of environmental health issues using the arts.

Improve STEAM education in the Salinas Valley, CA, Monterey County, and beyond.
Increase teacher understanding of Next Generation Science Standards and environmental health literacy and make this knowledge accessible to rural, agricultural populations.
Investigate immersive STEAM learning opportunities in formal and out-of-classroom settings to increase interest in biomedical research careers among underserved youth.

We also engage youth directly through a youth council to give voice and action to our community's future leaders and to amplify the voices experiences of young people, and leverage their expertise energy and ideas to promote public health.

Impact

Few school curricula clarify the relationship between the environment and human health. Still, fewer actively engage students in hands-on project-based learning paired with arts-based inquiry to investigate and address environmental health challenges in their local communities. There is often a gap between abstract knowledge, aptitude for creative problem-solving, and workforce expectations. As California is quickly becoming a majority Latinx state, disparities in the numbers of Latinx youth entering science professions continue.

This program is a step towards serving children from agricultural communities and improving access to well-paying and secure jobs in scientific fields. ESTA is a leap towards a larger, stronger, and more diversified STEM workforce, fostering future stewards of planetary health.

Our work and information will be adapted for use by the Monterey Bay Aquarium, made available to California State University Monterey Bay teacher education programs, and will be distributed to educators through CSUMB, the Aquarium, the Monterey County Office of Education, the California Office of Migrant Education, and added to NIH web resources that reach thousands of educators nationally.