Improving education for children is one of my passions as a student at the Mandel School of Applied Social Sciences at Case Western Reserve University. It’s also a focus of STEM, an educational program bringing science, technology, engineering and mathematics to the urban school systems of Ohio.

As a part of my internship with the Cleveland Foundation this summer, I’m working under the leadership of Ms. Sonya Pryor-Jones, executive director of the Metropolitan Cleveland Consortium for STEM OSLN-Cleveland Hub. This gives me the opportunity to meet, interview and converse with some of the students and educators at both Design Lab and MC2 STEM High Schools. A series of online articles will describe and help show how and why STEM programs impact the lives of urban students of Cleveland.

STEM schools and programs offer an innovative form of education where students are active learners. Students work on hands-on projects and have proactive involvement in the learning process. STEM schools have created a dynamic learning environment, where everyone is a teacher and everyone is a student. With its Project-Based learning approach, STEM schools encourage the students to find innovative, original and motivational ways of immersing themselves in the learning process. According to the people behind STEM, “STEM empowers students to become innovators and inventors, self-reliant and logical thinkers.”

This summer I will have the opportunity to tell stories of various students for whom MC2 STEM high schools and Design Lab have proven to be effective models of educating the future generations of doctors, engineers, fashion designers and biologists.

This series of stories will give readers a chance to look at this modern, ground-breaking, personalized learning environment where students not only listen to lectures but actually design solar panels, robots, yearbooks and become masters of their own learning.

Every two weeks I will be posting articles on the STEM HUB website to narrate the experiences of both the students and educators at both schools. As a student, I am extremely excited about this project and look forward to meeting the students and getting their perspective on the STEM education system and how it is helping them achieve their respective future ambitions. My first article was posted on July 9th. Stay tuned for more.

Each week we will use this space to give each of our interns a chance to reflect on their internship experiences. Seerat Bahniwal, a graduate student of Case Western Reserve University, has been placed at the Metropolitan Cleveland Consortium for STEM.