Our second location on the south side of Chicago within the Hyde Park community will concentrate on helping to drive inclusive innovation, STEM education and assist in economic development in surrounding Chicago communities. One of our first initiatives will be launching a community-driven STEM asset mapping project.

STEM Asset Mapping Project

STEM asset mapping is an information gathering process that identifies all STEM programming, community learning spaces, and STEM employment opportunities to visualize them in a map, creating a STEM learning landscape. Asset mapping provides communities a holistic view of their community assets and collective strengths.

Argonne in partnership with the Arthur M. Brazier Foundation and Northwestern University’s Office of Community Education Partnerships, will lead the efforts of STEM asset mapping nine communities on Chicago’s southside, cataloguing STEM assets from Kindergarten to career, and will be freely accessible to the public when completed in early summer 2022.

South Side Asset Surveys

The first step of the mapping project is to collect survey data from community learning spaces (including schools), STEM employers and workforce development programs within the nine South Side neighborhoods the project is focused on (Woodlawn, Washington Park, Oakland, Douglas, Grand Boulevard, Kenwood, Hyde Park, Greater Grand Crossing and South Shore). To learn more about the surveys or fill one out, select from below.

• Community Organizations
• Schools
• Employers
• Workforce Development

Project goals

• Build a south side learning landscape by identifying STEM resources, programs, and opportunities.
• Provide STEM and community-based organizations with data to inform programming, policies, and strategies that advance and support robust STEM education and workforce development activities.
• Host community data-driven conversations to explore existing strengths and identify gaps and resource needs.
• Cultivate new partnerships and relationships that support the development of new programming and the garnering of new resources.

Community Conversations

Core to our work is partnership, and as true conveners and collaborators, we aim to work within and across the nine communities to co-develop the south side STEM learning landscape. We kicked off this project by bringing together community leaders, STEM providers and members of the community on March 3^rd for a Community Kick Off Meeting.

Additional community conversations will be held throughout Spring and Summer. Join the email list serve to receive updates and event announcements. For more information about the mapping project or interested in partnering please contact ChicagoSTEM@​anl.​gov. To learn more about the Argonne in Chicago initiative visit our website.