For more than a decade MEDB’s Women In Technology (WIT) sponsored STEM/Service Learning programs have led the state in progressive STEM education. Student teams have been selecting community based/environmental and cultural issues to create high tech solutions. Our STEM/Service Learning model has been recognized nationally as an innovative, relevant, and successful approach to education – it is unlike any other class in today’s middle and high school curriculum.

Our program is a project-based, service-learning oriented class that provides students with the most current, high-end technologies available in some of the most progressive fields in the world. It is more than a class offering and much more than a "computer class". At its heart, it is a coordinated attempt to provide today's students with an educational atmosphere that allows them to gain insight into their own abilities to acquire and use information, solve problems, and gain valuable experience in using this technology.

Students routinely interact with hardware and software in animation, computer aided design, engineering design, visualization, database design, webpage design, programming, office automation, global positioning systems, and geographic information systems. The students, working in teams, tackle sophisticated service-oriented projects. In the process of solving these problems, they learn to become creative, intuitive, adaptable learners who can solve unpredictable, real-world problems.

Today, our Maui pilot has grown into a full-blown statewide STEM based, serving learning program, moving out to 15 schools, involving over 600 students annually on every island.

This critical mass has spurred the creation of the Hawaii STEM Conference, a Maui-based STEM/Service-Learning event that attracts student teams from across the state to showcase and share their technology savvy in advancing environmental stewardship and making a difference in their respective communities.

For more information contact Isla Young at isla@medb.org or (808) 875-2300.