About the STEM Center

The Millard Oakley STEM Center is the product of years of planning, dreaming, and developing valuable partnerships with government and education agencies, business and industry fields, and with the regional community and beyond to focus on

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Millard Oakley STEM Center
enhancing,improving and impacting the way STEM subjects are taught, made accessible to students, and how those experiences are evaluated and studied.

Vision

The Millard Oakley STEM Center energizes individuals, creates educational supports, and researches vital frameworks for innovative teaching and learning in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.

Core Values

  • STEM literacy is a key component of responsible citizenship.
    EXPL_shark4
    Autopsy a Shark! EXPLORATION workshop
  • STEM education is the shared responsibility of schools, industry, government, and the public.
  • Our collective embrace of STEM priorities guides future economic growth as a region, state and nation.
  • The STEM pipeline begins in early childhood.
  • All children, regardless of gender, race, ethnicity, or learning style, can excel in STEM disciplines and can aspire to STEM careers.
  • Effective teaching at all levels utilizes hands-on, minds-on inquiry into the natural world.
  • Effective and innovative STEM teaching, preschool though university, should be recognized and shared.
  • A campus-wide STEM collaboration partnering with lead education agencies, industries, and community organizations fosters economic development in the Upper Cumberland region of Tennessee.
  • The Millard Oakley STEM Center provides a regional presence for external agencies such as NASA, USDA, ORNL, and the TN STEM Leadership Council.

Mission

The Millard Oakley STEM Center improves the teaching and learning of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (pre-school through university) by acting on goals in three areas: outreach, academics, and research.

  • We reach out to the public through informal STEM education enrichment
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    Headstart for Science & Engineering Fair EXPLORATION Workshop 5th-8th grade
    experiences, to P-16 (pre-school through college) students through Exploration and Expedition programs, and to educators through professional development opportunities for preschool through college teachers.
  • We partner academically with the Colleges of Education and Arts & Sciences in the comprehensive preparation of teachers.
  • We also partner with the Colleges of Engineering, Agriculture & Human Sciences, and Business in preparing future STEM and information systems professionals.
  • We support innovative instructional design and use of active learning environments.
  • We facilitate research of the STEM teaching and learning process and provide an outlet for STEM researchers to disseminate their work to the public.
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