Boeing Donates $1 Million Toward STEM NOLA's New Orleans East Facility

Feb. 18—After a $1 million donation from Boeing, STEM NOLA's envisioned $15 million New Orleans East science education hub is a step closer to reality, said Calvin Mackie, the group's founder and CEO.

STEM NOLA, founded in 2013 by Mackie, a former engineering professor at Tulane University, has greatly expanded since its infancy of Saturday science sessions in Mackie's garage for neighborhood kids.

The group offers weekly science tutorials at parks, during and after-school programming and virtual lessons, reaching kids across New Orleans and beyond. The group has also partnered with an organization in Tanzania, in eastern Africa, to engage students there.

In the next few months the group will launch city-wide after-school programming at NORD facilities and public libraries, Mackie said.

The program has reached 125,000 students since its founding, Mackie said, speaking by phone from Miami, where STEM NOLA was collaborating with Florida International University to teach students a lesson about the circulatory system that included building a mechanical heart. They recently did similar engagements in Mobile and Atlanta.

STEM is an acronym for science, technology, engineering and math.

A new science hub

Oschner Health donated property for the new science center. Mackie said designs for the new building — which will include classroom space and lots of modern technology — have been completed.

The group has not set a date for groundbreaking.

Mackie started the program with $100,000 of his own funds, but has garnered a number of donations. Notable among them, the U.S. Department of Defense awarded the group a $2.79 million grant to expand its educational workshops across the Gulf South to serve military-connected families.

The group has already fundraised $1.25 million from the W. K. Kellogg Foundation, $1 million in CARES Act money, and $2 million in state capital outlay funding. But the Boeing donation "kicked open the door for us to start on fundraising across with nation with other corporations and locally in New Orleans," Mackie said.

Looking back at STEM NOLA's impact, Mackie recalled one of his first STEM NOLA kids is now an engineer at Lockheed Martin building F35 fighter jets. The former student said building a rocket in a park on Saturdays with STEM NOLA inspired him to become an engineer, Mackie said.

"We have to get our kids tinkering, building stuff with their hands, critically thinking, asking why it worked, why it didn't work . . . that's gonna give rise to the mindsets and skills that are needed in the 21st century," Mackie said.

As parents and students have seen STEM NOLA, Mackie said they have requested more STEM exposure in their own schools: "We've seen a changing tide in terms of the mindset of the schools," Mackie said.

The goal is to make STEM activities a recreation as common as football or basketball, he said.

"For the children of New Orleans to have access to this type of space, and the type of equipment and this type of technology hopefully from cradle to career. I think we could change the trajectory of many families, if not the community," Mackie said.

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