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@Scale Project Initiative
What is @Scale?
What's New
Background
Funded Projects
What is @Scale?
@Scale is a strategic initiative, by the Governor’s STEM Advisory Council, to focus public and private resources in support of an integrated portfolio of education enhancement projects aligned to achieve the goals of the Commonwealth’s STEM Plan (.PDF). This portfolio will address the domains of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) and span education levels from pre-K to college/workforce. Selecting and sustainably funding this portfolio of projects is an important first step in developing a systemic framework to engage and support a greater number and diverse body of students in STEM learning and career pathways and will be done in phases.
What's New
@Scale Phase II Projects Announced
December 13, 2012—Following a Request for Proposals (RFP) launched in September—the second in a series of four—the Massachusetts Department of Higher Education has selected five @Scale Projects for funding and endorsement:
- BATEC's "Big Data"
- University of Massachusetts' "ABLE4STEM"
- Central Massachusetts' Workforce Investment Board's "STEM Power Workforce Network"
- McCann Technical School's "Western Regional Partnership"
- Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts' "STEM Pathways Project"
The RFP sought proposals that addressed goals 4 and 6 of the state STEM Plan:
- Post-Secondary Graduation Rate Improvement
- Workforce Development (including projects that engage vocational technical schools, community colleges, and public universities)
Qualifying projects were required to:
- Address one or more goals of the Massachusetts STEM Plan (.PDF);
- Reflect a strong education research foundation;
- Demonstrate a history of successful outcomes for targeted populations of students, workers and/or educators;
- Be cost-effective on a per-student/teacher basis;
- Report prior formative and summative results determined through independent 3rd party evaluations; and
- Incorporate design characteristics, infrastructure and support systems that support scale-up and/or replication (including classroom-based and online technology to enhance and extend student learning and data systems that enable improved student success) to serve many more students/workers/educators.
The @Scale Phase II RFP closed on Thursday, October 25, 2012, with the receipt of 11 proposals. The Operations Board of the Governor's STEM Advisory Council reviewed and scored them and recommended five proposals to the Council for funding. Together the five proposals sought $428,000 in funding and secured $1.3 million in private funding matches. Additional details about the five new projects are available on the Funded Projects page.
In 2012, the STEM Council selected and endorsed seven projects for meeting the @Scale criteria. These projects each proposed scale-up implementation projects requiring a match of public funds with private funds on a target ration of $1:$3 public to private. These projects already have or, in a few cases, are completing their funding match requirement while beginning their scale-up implementation projects. The focus of this first phase of @Scale addressed student interest and readiness, goals 1 and 3 of the state STEM Plan.
Subsequently, the STEM Council announced an expansion of this initial seven project pilot to a planned portfolio of approximately 20 projects over three more phases for a total of four. The @Scale Project Initiative will address the spectrum of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics across learning levels from Pre-K through Elementary, Secondary and college/Workforce. Currently, Phase II of @Scale is open. Latter phases (Phases III and IV) will focus on middle and high school science and mathematics achievement and finally, elementary, pre-K and out-of-school/afterschool pipeline development. You can read more about the @Scale Project Initiative here.