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Mentors and Volunteers

Home > Mentors and Volunteers

KC STEM Alliance relies on volunteers to fill a variety of needs, from helping with office tasks to event planning and mentoring. Both of the nationally recognized STEM programs we facilitate, Project Lead The Way and FIRST Inspires, require countless volunteers to succeed.

Project Lead The Way

Project Lead The Way (PLTW) volunteers support students in a non-traditional, project-oriented classroom setting. Volunteers might serve on a partnership team, visit a classroom, serve as mentors or judge student competitions. PLTW volunteers and their companies may also offer job shadowing, field trips or internships.

FIRST

FIRST volunteers work with students after school in a fun, interactive setting where they can apply science and math principles to build robots. FIRST volunteers might work with grade school and middle school students involved with FIRST Lego League robotic challenges or at the high school level with the FIRST Robotics Competition, a high-energy robotics competition. In Kansas City, volunteers are critical to the FIRST tournament experience for over 3,000 students in grades K-12.

Local volunteer registration takes place through the national FIRST system. Once you register, you can search for events in Kansas and Missouri to sign up.

Mentoring

Dreaming about becoming an engineer, a scientist or another STEM professional begins with understanding what people in those careers actually do. When you share your lived experiences with students or educators, young people will discover potential career pathways and benefit from real-time feedback as they develop their emerging STEM skills. Mentoring opportunities range from a lunchtime chat about your work to lending your expertise to a team or classroom for a full academic year.