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Beyond the Three-Year Partnership
The NASA Explorer Schools project is a three-year partnership between a school or consortium of schools and NASA. Upon completion of the three-year formal commitment, schools transition to NES alumni status, at which time the sustainability of the project services is contingent upon partnership contributions. To accomplish NES project sustainability, alumni schools must begin to embrace or, in some cases, continue to embrace a broad base of diverse STEM stakeholders that will support the schools in meeting their stated mission and goals.
NASA perceives partnerships as a valuable strategy to help education stakeholders at the local, regional and national levels rethink and restructure learning environments to improve science, technology, engineering and mathematics, or STEM, teaching and learning. NASA advocates mobilizing an integrated group of stakeholders from academia, industry, government and community-based organizations to impact long-term STEM education reform efforts.
A Necessary Strategy for Education in the 21st Century
Partnerships have emerged as a necessary strategy to ensure academic excellence and opportunity for America's youth and to create the community-wide systemic change necessary for effective long-term school reform. As school budgets are tightened and demands to improve student academic performance are increased, schools all over the country are beginning to embrace partnerships for support.
Image to right: NES school teams learn that forming strategic partnerships with other organizations or institutions is a vital component for successfully meeting or exceeding their goals. Credit: PARAGON TEC
The purpose of a partnership is centered on the concept of TEAMwork; the universally accepted notion that Together Everyone Achieves More. Globally, partners work together every day, based upon the conviction that together they can accomplish what no one person, nor one organization or institution, can do alone.
To support partnership and sustainability efforts, NES advocates a systems approach to partnership development. This systems approach is modeled after a real-world working system that has supported the NASA SEMAA Project. The approach was influenced by a research-based model that evolved during more than 30 years of experience by partnership practitioners nationwide.
The NES systems approach to partnership development is broken down into seven stages that put alumni schools on the road to partnership success, or expand current partnership successes. As schools work through these stages, being open to changes is important as new data and insights inform and affect the whole process. As additional information emerges, changes can be incorporated into any stage.
Image to left: The seven stages of partnership development begin with determining needs and end with demonstrating results on an annual basis.
Credit: PARAGON TEC
As each annual planning cycle proceeds, the seven stages of development need to be revisited and refined. Data must continuously drive the efforts, from determining needs, vision, goals and objectives, to demonstrating achievements on an annual basis. By using an annual, cyclical approach to partnership development, partnerships can evolve, mature, remain responsive to changing needs and become more robust.
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