Driving STEM Career Access and Aligning Academic Skills with Industry Needs through Higher Education-Industry Partnerships

Partnerships between higher education institutions and industry partners can help align academic skills with industry career needs and support underserved students in STEM career pathways. The Donald Danforth Plant Science Center in St. Louis, MO, is the world's largest non-academic plant/ag science research institute. Our PIs research projects have practical applications and solutions for private industry. The Center partners with educational institutions to support K-12, undergraduate, and graduate programs.

Community partnerships can help reach diverse student populations and prepare them for careers in STEM. The JJK Food Agriculture Nutrition Innovation Center is an example of a partnership between the Danforth Center, the University of Illinois, and the Jackie Joyner-Kersey Foundation, offering STEAM+Ag after-school and summer programming to high school students from disadvantaged communities. The program also provides internships at the Danforth Center and other plant and agriculture science companies in St. Louis and scholarships for agriculture degrees at UIUC, supporting students of color in obtaining life and agriculture science undergraduate degrees.

The Danforth Center's partnership with St. Louis Community College provides dual enrollment/credit life science programming, addressing the challenge of transporting high school students to campus or finding accredited high school teachers to provide community college courses. The center trains postdoctoral fellows in pedagogy and classroom management to teach certificate courses at high schools, reducing barriers for underserved high school students to obtain a life science certificate.

Industry-led Course-based Undergraduate Research Experiences provide whole classrooms of STEM students with real-world collaborations with industry scientists. For non-research academic institutions, this provides a unique opportunity for students to engage in authentic research and build industry-desired skills.

Public-private partnerships offer unique collaborations that can support institutional change to better prepare students for STEM careers.