STEM (science, technology, engineering and maths) education is having an international moment. Nations around the world are investing in STEM infrastructure and pathways like never before. From Digital Skills funding by the EU Commission, to the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa, calling on African leaders to increase education funding in these fields; to the US President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology pushing for more federal funding in these fields– in all corners of the globe, leaders are recognising that empowering the next generation of innovators through STEM education is vital for a bright and resilient future.
Iceland is no exception. The country-wide organisation STEM Ísland, which was only founded last year, is already making headway in several Icelandic communities. Founded by Fulbright Specialist Bridget Burger and Huld Hafliðadóttir, a community leader and entrepreneur, STEM Ísland is a project whose aim embodies “think globally, act locally.” It focuses on building STEM education in small communities, one by one, with the long-term goal of creating nationwide change.
A fortuitous visit
When Bridget visited Iceland in August 2021, she was already the Director of the Cape Cod Regional STEM Network. But she didn’t arrive on business.
“I came to Iceland as a visitor, as a tourist, actually,” she recounts. “I came to Húsavík, and stayed in a wonderful guest house, of which Huld was the owner. And when I walked in and said, ‘I’m from Cape Cod [Massachusetts],’ Huld said she had been there. She was with the whale museum here in Húsavík [as project manager] and she had visited Cape Cod to connect with the whale museums in my community.. We started talking and I asked, ‘What is the community working on here?’, explaining the work that I do in STEM education, because I had been leading community STEM education initiatives through the Cape Cod Regional STEM network, using a cross-sector partnership model we call STEM Learning Ecosystems.”
Huld was quickly impressed.
“My background is not in STEM or in science,” Huld says. “The term STEM was actually new to me. It was during COVID. I had to find another job to support my guesthouse so I was working at the Húsavík Academic Center, and I was helping with a report on the fourth industrial revolution and what rural areas in Iceland need to adapt to it. When I learned what Bridget was doing, I sat down again and all the resources that I had in front of me, from the government and from the workforce, were all stating the same thing: we need more STEM educated people in Iceland.”
It wasn’t long before the two of them found joint inspiration in what they could create together, and they were ready to get started immediately.
“It’s teaching the kids how to think, how to ask questions, how to experiment, how to fail, how to persevere, through questions and discovery.”
“My background is in social studies so I really love everything that supports and empowers the community,” Huld says. “We started to brainstorm: what can we do? Can we try out this STEM Learning Ecosystems model in Iceland? And we started applying for grants and trying to get people on board.”
Anyone who has tried to launch a nonprofit can probably attest that a major part of the effort involves securing funding. From STEM Ísland, it began with the pilot programme, STEM Húsavík, and the first big break was a local development grant from the SSNE Regional Development fund in 2022. STEM Ísland was officially established in 2023.
Building ecosystems
“I think we can talk about STEM Ísland as an umbrella organisation, and there are four pillars,” Bridget explains. “To advance STEM education in Iceland, but also to launch new ecosystems on the community level – especially in the rural areas of Iceland and small communities; to support teachers: and to build a network of educators across regions and across countries.”
Ecosystems, in the sense Bridget is referring to, are a key part of the strategy. It entails uniting different sectors of any given community – schools, libraries, private companies, parents, any institution with a vested interest in promoting STEM education in the community – to participate in the ways that they are willing and able.
“It brings together not only the schools – teachers and administrators – but also nonprofit organisations, research centres, libraries, museums, families, industry, and government,” Bridget says. “Really all sectors of a community work together as a network to support STEM education. That’s the basis of our work that started here in Húsavík.”
When building an ecosystem, there is no predetermined blueprint regarding who should do what and how; everyone contributes in ways drawn from their own resources and creativity. This was also the case in Húsavík, which involved the formation of a local advisory board. This comprises representatives from the different sectors of the aforementioned ecosystem, who all offer their input and come up with strategies for how to implement boosting STEM education in their community.
“We facilitated this new organisation identifying what resources Húsavík has, and where the community wanted to go,” she says. “It was not something that I came in from the outside and said, ‘Here’s what you should do.’ The advisory board decided to focus on raising awareness about STEM in Húsavík through a series of lunch meetings, a podcast series, and a new website, as well as to put an emphasis on sustaining the organisation and writing grants and getting sponsorship. Another focus area for STEM Húsavík was to support teachers, so we offered a series of teacher training workshops, training almost every teacher working at every single educational level here in Húsavík. We started a lending library with the help of a US Embassy grant that we got.”
Kindergarten scientists
One particularly telling example of what has arisen from this project is how this initiative played out at the local kindergarten in Húsavík, Huld tells me. I was taken aback at first. How does one go about teaching STEM subjects to children still learning how to write their own names?
“We say that we are born scientists,” Huld says. “We’re always doing experiments. We’re testing, trying, and learning by doing, and then as we grow, society kind of puts us in a box.” Intentionally or not, the childlike sense of wonder about the world around us can sometimes get taught out of us, dulling our curiosity. “So we started offering the venue to keep on exploring and to learn the terms, like, ‘Yes, I’m doing science, I’m doing an experiment, I’m jumping in this puddle. What will happen? What if we do it together? What if we add in rocks?’ You know, just being a kid.”
“Building that relationship with the teachers, that was a really important part. That gave them more comfort coming to us with their inspiration to do more with STEM and STEAM,” Bridget adds. “And then in terms of what it looks like, what we did in that next series of workshops was really teach the scientific method and how to articulate it, so that they could continue to do a lot of the things that they were doing in terms of playing with the children, but with a little bit of vocabulary. It’s teaching the kids how to think, how to ask questions, how to experiment, how to fail, how to persevere, through questions and discovery. And, it is worth noting that in our view, STEM and STEAM can be interchangeable– we agree for sure that using arts and creativity within STEM education is important – as long as the basis of the activity has the kids doing science, engineering design, or innovation – in other words, some version of the scientific method.”
STEM Ísland was off to a great start, and things were clicking along nicely in Húsavík. “Then we started to get calls from other communities in Iceland,” Bridget says. “So now we have one in Borgarnes. That’s the newest ecosystem in Iceland.”
We are the champions
A nonprofit with the goal of going nationwide cannot be run by two people. In keeping with the grassroots approach, STEM Ísland seeks out people in different communities who are willing to take up the mantle where they live to try and develop an ecosystem themselves.
“Basically it’s just someone who has the ability to connect different people to different sectors, and bring them to the table and hold this together,” Bridget says. “That’s what’s needed. So if it turns out to be a principal, that’s great, if it turns out to be a parent, that’s great, too. What we call that person is the champion. We need a community champion. We have a toolkit for how to launch an ecosystem. Really all it takes is that we meet with them and show them how this model works.”
This approach helps ensure that, just as Bridget did not come into Húsavík to tell the people living there what they “should” be doing, the people who bring together the elements needed for a healthy ecosystem have a vested interest, by dint of living in that community. STEM Ísland merely provides the training to make it all happen.
“They benefit you, as a lifelong learner, whether or not you go into a STEM field as a profession.”
“We look for a kind of critical mass, but essentially, we work with any community where they’re at,” Bridget says. “I would say three to five really dedicated people would make it work. The ecosystem is always changing, always growing anyway. There is no real right way that it should look. It looks different in every community, because it comes from the ground up.”
A regional question
Another important aspect of STEM Ísland and its development in communities outside of Reykjavík is the sometimes lopsided nature of education in Iceland. Children in some of the smaller, more far-flung communities in Iceland may have to travel considerable distances just to go to primary or secondary school. For going to university, they may have to leave altogether and move to the capital. Being from a small community herself, this is definitely something Huld holds close to her heart, as she thinks of her own children.
“My question is, will they be able to live in Húsavík, if they would like to, in 10 or 20 years?” She says. “What will be the jobs that we depend on and where do they see themselves? What do they see? And we also have to encourage young people to be creative and to think about what they would like to do in this area, because that’s the future. We don’t know what the jobs are, what skills we will need. And that’s kind of what we’re building. And we need that specifically in the rural areas. We need that skill building.”
Indeed, even for those who do not wish to pursue careers in STEM-related fields, STEM education can be beneficial. Technological literacy is becoming an important skill in increasingly more fields, for sure, but learning critical thinking, problem solving, and creative approaches to any given challenge are all boosted by STEM education.
“That’s actually what the benefit of STEM education is,” Bridget says. “Not only the core skills that you gain if you’re interested in going that route. If you’re not, you still gain a whole set of skills: teamwork, collaboration, communication, problem solving, data analysis – there are things that you gain by doing hands-on, high-quality STEM the way that we promote it in the STEM ecosystems approach. They benefit you, as a lifelong learner, whether or not you go into a STEM field as a profession. And so that’s really the power of what we’re bringing. It’s really empowering that next generation for success in whatever field they’re choosing. Those are skills that you need to be successful in today’s world.”
Building outward and upward
Since the pilot project began, to the expansion to Borgarnes, STEM Ísland has gained considerably more attention and support. They very recently secured a partnership with the University of Iceland.
Bridget agrees, and sees an interchange between universities in more urban settings and these smaller communities being a mutually beneficial relationship.
“We do want to really create partnerships with the other universities as well,” she emphasises. “And I think that because of the connections that we’ll be making to the regional and local compulsory schools, there’s a lot that we can do to contribute to strengthening that. Because I think that’s a two way street as well. I think universities need input from the communities and communities need the input from the university. If we can help to be that bridge through the work that we do, I would love to see that happening here.”
Their ambitions have also encouraged them to set their sights not only across the rest of Europe for further partnerships, but also globally. At the same time, their primary focus is right here in Iceland; helping others build a network of ecosystems, one community at a time.
“We aim to create on the current funding that we have,” Bridget says. “I think we can do two to four [ecosystem project launches] a year, maybe more. It takes time to build the trust and the relationship at the community level, and we’re having those conversations with other rural communities. But our door is always open.”
