That’s a wrap on the 2024-2025 mentoring season!

A few weeks ago we wrapped up our latest and most successful mentoring season to date. Here’s a look at all we accomplished:

New mentoring SySTEM

To improve our goals of humanizing STEM and showcasing our amazing mentors, we implemented a new internal page on the website that for the first time enabled mentees and teachers to see individual profiles, complete with pictures, for each of our mentors. We got great feedback from teachers and mentees that the new SySTEM was easier and more enjoyable to use than our previous Excel sheet format. To protect our mentors and mentees, access to the SySTEM is password protected. Mentees must fill out a permission slip with a parent/guardian signature and teachers must contact us for access. You can learn more here!

14 mentoring events in Nevada and New York!

This year, our program enabled multiple mentoring events at two different schools.

Elko High School in Elko, NV: Our amazing friend and teacher Ben Wallek organized EIGHT mentoring events for his students this year as part of his STEM Seminar class, which helps prepare students in rural Nevada to pursue STEM in college. This included six events with alumni from Elko High School who are now professionals in various STEM fields, an event entirely in Spanish which was featured in the local newspaper, and a large end-of-the-year STEM mixer for students to talk to multiple mentors. This year also marked the first time that previous mentees in the program from EHS came back to be mentors themselves! We look forward to another great year of mentoring with EHS students next year with Kelby Lindberg, who is taking over the STEM Seminar class for Ben, who is moving to teach in Texas.

Mentors and mentees participate in an end-of-year mentoring celebration at Elko High School.

Elko High School alumna Hannah talks with students at Elko High School about her path to college and into STEM.

Herricks High School in New Hyde Park, NY: Mrs. Etri organized SIX mentoring events for her students this year as part of her Intermediate Science Research class, which prepares 10^th grade students to complete summer research internships. This included events with alumni from Herricks High School and other events to expose students to different scientific fields and let mentees hear more about what it is like to work in a lab.

Herricks High School alumna Kaitlyn meets with mentees at Herricks High School to talk about her research experience.

Certificate Program

To help mentors demonstrate their commitment towards inclusivity and representation in STEM, Nibras started a new initiative to offer certificates and letters explaining our program and highlighting the work of individual mentors. You can request a certificate at any time here!

Thank you to all of our amazing mentors, mentees, and teachers who made the program such an amazing success this year!

We look forward to expanding to even more classrooms next year! If you or anyone you know is interested in bringing Symbiotic STEM to a new classroom, please reach out to us at contact@symbioticstem.org