The Museum of Science & Industry (MOSI) in Tampa, FL runs a monthly STEAM Mentoring Café for Girls which gives girls an opportunity to network and engage with multiple women professionals to learn about a variety of STEAM careers.

Each month, fifty middle school girls attending Title 1 schools come in on a Saturday and participate in ‘speed mentoring’ sessions, spending about 10 minutes with each mentor to ask questions about what they do and how they got there, through education, work-based learning, and mentorships.

The EWD Team connected MOSI, an EWD Network Associate member and FlexFactor adopter, with Jabil, a NextFlex member from industry, to establish a relationship where women employed at Jabil in engineering positions participated in the Cafe’s meetings as mentors. So far, the students have been able to interact with women working in various positions at Jabil such as supply chain project manager, product verification engineering manager, and principal electrical engineer.

An unexpected, additional outcome of the program is that the mentors started networking with one another after meeting at the STEAM Cafe and stayed in touch long after their participation.

Sinclair Community College, located in Dayton, Ohio, partnered with several school districts in and around its service area to implement the FlexFactor program for students across southwest Ohio. The primary objective of this initiative was to increase student matriculation into Sinclair Community College. Sinclair’s Institutional Research department tracked students from program enrollment through postgraduation, assessing their decisions regarding postsecondary education.

They collected data for students from the 2022 and 2023 graduation cohorts who participated in FlexFactor, tracking their matriculation into Sinclair Community College one year after completing the program. These results are compared to a historical cohort of students from the same high schools who graduated before the implementation of FlexFactor.

The accompanying graph demonstrates that all six schools experienced improved direct-entry matriculation rates to Sinclair Community College following exposure to FlexFactor, with an average matriculation rate of 46%. This represents a 23-percentage point increase compared to the 2020 graduating cohort’s average matriculation rate of 24% pre-FlexFactor. The most significant improvement was observed at Greene County Career Center, where the matriculation rate increased from 33% pre-FlexFactor to 73% among FlexFactor students.

On July 27th, 2023, Trenholm State Community College in Montgomery, Alabama, hosted its FlexFactor Final Pitch event, at the end of a summer camp which took place on the Trenholm campus. Twenty high school students participated in this Final Pitch event, which represented the culmination of the FlexFactor program.

Kecia Hampton, the Trenholm State Community College Dual Enrollment Coordinator and FlexFactor Program Manager, invited Dr. Masoud Mahjouri-Samani and his team at the LASE-END [Laser Assisted Science and Engineering – Emerging Nanomaterials and Devices] Research Lab at Auburn University to participate in the FlexFactor program.

Through participating in Trenholm’s FlexFactor program, students were able to learn about advanced technology, build skills essential to future employment, including teamwork and problem-solving, and gain exposure to the most current education and career paths. And, because of the partnership between Trenholm State Community College and NextFlex member, Auburn University, during this FlexFactor iteration, the student participants were also able to gain exposure to the amazing opportunities, such as the state-of-the-art LASE-END research lab, that are available for their future education in their own community.