Cool Jobs series is sponsored by Alcoa Foundation - Society for Science Skip to content

Cool Jobs series is sponsored by Alcoa Foundation

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Cool Jobs, a popular series of articles on Science News for Students, has recently received a two-year funding commitment from Alcoa Foundation. This commitment is part of a larger grant from Alcoa that also supports the education outreach program at Intel ISEF and our new Science News in High Schools program.

Originally launched in April 2012 with sponsorship from Northrop Grumman and then supported by the Society, there were 23 Cool Jobs articles posted prior to Alcoa’s sponsorship. With this new support, the Society anticipates publishing 17 to 20 articles a year for two years, which will nearly triple the archive.

Articles in the Cool Jobs series typically feature three people working in different careers around a central topic. This thematic focus is designed to illustrate the breadth of people, research, and careers that exist within a topic, as well as to show students there is no field of interest they might have for which a STEM career can’t be found. Past themes have included explosions, delving into dung, museum collections, engineering based on biological organisms, the wide world of robots, math and entertainment, data detectives, futurists, cows, earthworms, and sense of smell. Articles focus not only on a researcher’s current career, but also on the interests and educational/career path they might have taken to get there.

Upcoming themes planned for the series include psychology, pets, consulting for the entertainment industry, wind, earth science, ice, sports, and many more.

Targeting middle and high school students, Science News for Students is a free resource available for students interested in STEM as well as for educators and parents seeking to improve science, technology, engineering and mathematics education by connecting real-world news to what students are learning in the classroom. The Cool Jobs series aims to inspire students to pursue STEM fields, while also providing educators with additional content within each article to promote classroom discussion around career opportunities.

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