Founded in 1997 by a small group of high school and college students, New Urban Arts is the largest high school afterschool arts program in Rhode Island. New Urban Arts is an independent nonprofit, not affiliated with any larger institution. The mission is to build a vital community that empowers young people as artists and leaders to develop a…

More and more jobs involve STEM, yet women are still underrepresented in many STEM fields, particularly engineering and computer science (National Science Foundation, 2019). Rural students in particular have historically faced numerous obstacles to entering STEM fields, including low educational aspirations, lack of STEM role models, and lack of…

Out-of-school time (OST) programs can play an important role in fostering the development of literacy skills among children and youth. To investigate the variety of literacy skill-building strategies OST programs use, researchers from the National Institute on Out-of-School Time (NIOST) examined the practices of 31 programs in Massachusetts. This…

As she reviewed participant feedback from the out-of-school time (OST) youth development program she managed at the New-York Historical Society Museum and Library (N-YHS), the author was excited to recognize a pattern. Many of the teen participants wrote responses like "I am proud of what my team was able to accomplish" and "I…