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Long Day for United Way, Fluor, Dallas Afterschool Puts STEM Education in the Spotlight

Rallies, panels, learning activities part of kick-off for United Way's annual fundraising campaign.
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Inside the Santa Clara Regional Community Center Education Building in West Dallas, more than 100 local elementary students were quietly interacting yesterday afternoon with 30 volunteers from Fluor Corp., the Irving-based global engineering and construction giant. The purpose of the unusual gathering: to pique the students’ interest in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) education by building catapults, designing roller coasters, and replicating dinosaur fossils.

It was all part of the annual campaign kickoff for United Way of Metropolitan Dallas, which has tapped Fluor Chairman and CEO David T. Seaton to serve as its 2015-2016 campaign chair. As a key initiative of the nonprofit’s 91st annual fundraising drive, Seaton’s company is partnering with United Way and Dallas Afterschool to expand STEM education opportunities to 22,000 North Texas students over the next two years.

The STEM initiative is important, the partners contend, because, according to the U.S. Department of Education, U.S. students rank 17th in science and 25th in math compared to the rest of the developed world. For girls and disadvantaged students, they say, the skills gap is even wider. At the same time, STEM job growth is outpacing the rest of the economy, with 700,000 STEM jobs projected for Texas alone by 2018.

At the West Dallas community center, located on the campus of Catholic Charities of Dallas, students sat with the Fluor volunteers and opened a number of brand-new, so-called “Wonder Kits” designed to encourage STEM learning and education. Inside the catapult-building kit, for example, there were rubber bands, plastic spoons, duct tape, a bottle cap, and a bundle of popsicle sticks. According to United Way, Fluor will spend $360,000 on the initiative, in part to donate more than 7,000 of the kits for use at Dallas Afterschool program sites through 2017. In addition to the Santa Clara center and other Catholic Charities sites, the kits will be used at Dallas Afterschool locales including Boys and Girls Clubs and Reader2Leaders in West Dallas.

Torrence Robinson, who is president of the Fluor Foundation and Fluor’s senior director for global community affairs, said there were at least two main reasons for the company’s involvement in the program. “We’re an engineering services company, and the lifeblood of our business is the quality and talent of our workforce. So, we’re investing in the ‘seed corn’ we’ll need to grow the future workforce pipeline,” he said. “At the same time, STEM is the foundation [that students will need] to succeed in the 21st century knowledge-based economy.  It’s all about stoking the curiosity of these young people.”

Added Kit Sawers, chief development officer for United Way of Metropolitan Dallas: Fluor’s Wonder Kits will “give kids a hands-on opportunity to create and have fun.”

The event at the community center was the culmination of a long day of 2015-’16 kick-off activities for the local United Way, whose goal is to raise $373 million over the next five years. (The nonprofit raised a record $72 million last year, surpassing its five-year goal of $310.5 million.)

The day began with a televised, pre-dawn “pep rally” at AT&T Plaza in Dallas’ Victory Park that featured Seaton and Jennifer Sampson, United Way’s local president and CEO. United Way of Metro Dallas board chair John Stephens, who is AT&T’s chief financial officer, also attended the rally, along with a number of volunteers waving signs that read, “Fluor Cares.”

The activities continued later at the Fluor headquarters complex in Irving, where Seaton participated in a lunchtime panel discussion with nearly 30 North Texas high school juniors and seniors. Students participating in the event—which was closed to reporters—came from Uplift Hampton Preparatory School and the Irma Lerma Rangel Young Women’s Leadership School, both of which are United Way service providers.

The long day was scheduled to end with an “annual kickoff” party in Dallas hosted by the local United Way’s Women of Tocqueville group, whose members are big United Way donors. Guests at the party were asked to help prepare some of the activity kits that would encourage young girls especially to pursue careers in STEM.

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