STEM Teacher Internship (STInt) Programme

Posted on March 14, 2023

The STEM Teacher Internship (STInt) programme provides pre-service and early career teachers with the opportunity to work in STEM industries nationwide over the summer period. The STInt model ensures that those who matter the most, students in classrooms across the country, have the best STEM education possible.

The programme’s key objectives are to inspire innovative learning by facilitating collaborative STEM partnerships between universities, companies and teachers. This globally unique initiative was founded in Dublin City University in 2016 by Associate Professor Eilish Mcloughlin and Professor Deirdre Butler together with Accenture and the 30% Club Ireland. Five teachers were placed in Accenture on a pilot basis that year.

Initial funding has supported the programme to expand its foundation beyond DCU to include Maynooth University, Trinity College Dublin, University of Galway, University of Limerick, University College Cork, and University College Dublin, The participant teachers are pursuing or are graduates of a range of initial teacher education programmes the seven universities nationally.

Following a scaling up of the programme to national level, 83 STEM teachers, both at primary and post-primary levels, will, this year, obtain experience of interacting first-hand with their subject area while gaining also direct knowledge of STEM and STEM related careers in 47 companies across the Republic of Ireland.

To date 177 teachers have been supported to complete internships and go on to inspire a passion for STEM in over 635,000 students primary and post-primary students.* On foot of strategic funding this number is expected to rise to over 500 teachers by 2025 participating in STEM internships across 100 host organisations impacting almost 200,000 primary students and well over 1.5m post-primary students.

Teachers, in addition to developing their core STEM competencies, act as role models for an integrated approach to STEM and its wide reaching opportunities for inclusiveness. Raising awareness of unconscious bias is embedded is the STInt programmes’ core principles, challenging barriers to inclusion and equality of access; STEM is everywhere and is for everyone. The host-organisations represent a variety of sectors, including biopharmaceuticals, technology, engineering, telecommunications, energy and finance.

As partners, they support engaging in a programme which offers a coordinated approach to their collective organisational goals of diverse and inclusive STEM engagement, in support of future skills needed in an ever changing world. The teachers, who participate in the STInt programme, are at the heart of building awareness of STEM related careers and addressing the long standing challenge of building a committed and diverse talent pipeline into the future.

The programme is coordinated by the national programme manager Dr. Mary Cunneen.

See https://stemteacherinternships.ie/ to hear from and see STInt alumni and learn about the many host organisations who offer immersive STEM experiences and inspire innovative learning.