Education Development Center, Inc. (EDC) and partners serve as the resource center for the ITEST program and community. This new iteration of the Learning Resource Center is re-named the STEM Learning and Research Center (STELAR) to represent the growing need to broaden the existing Community of Practice and share lessons learned with an increasingly diverse field of stakeholders. Among various other accomplishments in its nine-year tenure leading the LRC, EDC has provided leadership in building a thriving and highly engaged community of ITEST PIs, project staff and evaluators, developed a well-regarded model of technical support and programmatic resource center infrastructure, raised the national visibility of the ITEST program and the collective impact of its grantees, and helped disseminate key project findings to the field through data briefs, public webinars, and working group activities. The STELAR team brings their collective expertise in capacity building, broadening participation, and career development to this new work. That team is enriched through a new partnership with the EdLab Group, an educational equity non-profit organization, who brings considerable expertise to this work, in particular through the National Girls Collaborative Project. EdLab Group is involved in the implementation of key dissemination and outreach activities leveraging their experience developing national networks and collaborative dissemination models, and their extensive connections to broadening participation communities. In addition, EdLab Group has primary responsibility for the social media work of STELAR as it supports and deepens the technical support, dissemination and outreach work.
This partnership builds upon past EDC successes, leverages wider networks and connects with audiences who are not currently aware of ITEST. Together, EDC and EdLab Group capitalize on the vibrant ITEST Community of Practice already developed and the existing knowledge base of the ITEST program to expand efforts in new directions that build on what has been learned, develop new relationships, and broaden outreach to targeted stakeholders. STELAR focuses on three primary areas of work, namely: 1) Facilitating projects' success through timely, high quality technical support and monitoring of projects throughout their implementation lifecycle; 2) Informing and influencing the field of STEM/ICT education practitioners and researchers, industry and policy stakeholders by disseminating project findings nationally; and 3) Deepening the impact and reach of the ITEST program by broadening participation to areas and institutions not currently represented in the ITEST portfolio.
