EastSide Charter opens Chemours STEM hub

WILMINGTON — The EastSide Charter School cut the ribbon on its new STEM hub Monday morning with high hopes that the facility will help students of all ages continue to study science and mathematics and unlock their potential.

The Chemours STEM Hub is a 41,000 square-foot facility complete with computer and science labs, classrooms and maker spaces, as well as an esports arena that is steps away from the EastSide Charter School. Officials hope the new facility will encourage students and adults alike to explore. The $27 million project also brought Delaware’s corporate partners like Chemours and Barclays to the table to invest in the east side of Wilmington, as well as state and federal funds.

“We’re trying to prepare our young people for their futures, and at the same time, we’re seeing that we’ve not adequately prepared the facilities to make that possible for all families, EastSide Charter CEO Aaron Bass told the Delaware Business Times. “Now, you have a space where not only can kids think and learn about STEM, but they’re able to do it alongside people who are professionals in that field.”

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When the STEM Hub was first announced, it was planned at half the size as an educational program for the charter school’s middle school students, complete with 3D printing, computer programing and robotics labs. The curriculum planned included courses in engineering, coding, chemistry, biology, renewable energy as well as other related subjects.

In the months after those initial plans, the project grew to add more science labs, communal space and offices as the facility will now serve as an after-school community center as well as a place for the east side of Wilmington to come together and learn. Leaders plan to keep the STEM hub open to the public from 4 to 7 p.m. with the support of the Wilmington Library.

Outside of education, the STEM Hub will also serve as a workforce training site as well as a place where residents can also access some health services by Westside Family Healthcare which will operate in a health center space, offering primary care and behavioral services.

In addition, the STEM Hub will be a training ground for the life sciences sector, offering a three-year pilot program teaching skills needed for professional roles in life sciences. Last year, Delaware’s federal delegation announced that it had secured $2.1 million in federal earmarks for the program.

“Now we’re able to answer that workforce development question. For the community, it’s even more amazing, because now anybody can walk in off the street and get a job in STEM and get training. That opens up the opportunity to get a job at $60,000 a year with companies. That’s unique,” Bass told DBT.

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Chemours President and CEO Denise Dignam noted that now, more than ever, companies like DuPont, Chemours and others need highly skilled workers. When she started her career, 10% of engineers were women. Now, the number has grown to 29%.

The STEM workforce is continuing to become more diverse as the years pass with women accounting for 35% of the STEM workforce, or about 12 million women. Additionally, 8.3 million people working in the field come from underrepresented minority groups, or 24% of that workforce.

Despite the workforce growing more diverse in recent years, the National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics found that there’s still a pay disparity across races. The 2021 report found that white workers with a Bachelor’s Degree or higher earns $8,000 more than a Black worker and $10,000 more than a Hispanic worker.

“We need more kids to understand the value of STEM and when it’s done right, they have the possibility to find solutions we need in our future. We need people with critical thinking skills, but we also need subject matter experts,” Dignam told DBT. “It’s the hard skills as well as the soft skills in collaboration because that’s how we find solutions.

EastSide Charter school is in the predominantly Black community of Riverside. The school’s annual report released in January 2024 show that of its 472 students, or 65%, are considered low income. Data from Wilmington’s 2010 census highlighted the severity of the low-income area by finding that 30% of homes in the district reported a median household income of between $15,000 and $24,999.

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This disparity is not lost on Gov.-elect Matt Meyer who taught sixth grade math at Prestige Academy 11 years ago. During the ceremony before the hub’s ribbon cutting, he said that he was struggling to teach students the formula on the slope of a line. Instead, he started to use Scratch, a then-new tool to teach kids the computer programming language.

“Days later, I was talking with a friend of mine who teaches at [Wilmington] Friends School, and they said they taught that as part of the fourth-grade curriculum,” Meyer said. “It was apparent that not only were we delivering on the curriculum that our kids need to succeed, but there was also an inequality that would have reverberations for years to come.”

The governor-elect said that a beautiful building can be built, but “we needed to make sure we’re supporting the educators who are in here.”

 

 

 

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