A round table on the Development of STEM education in Lviv and other regions was held on November 7, 2023. The event was jointly organized by the Department of Education and Science, Lviv Regional Military Administration, and Tech StartUp School, Lviv Polytechnic National University.
The representatives of authorities, heads of extracurricular facilities, business representatives and the head of educational programs of the Western Regional Office of the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) Olha Kotovska took part in the event. Such a wide representation made it possible to look at the topic of STEM education from different angles, thanks to which the conversation turned out to be very interesting and constructive.
Nazar Podolchak, head of Tech StartUp School, together with Anastasiia Martyniuk, head of Lviv Open Lab, presented a case study of the successful implementation of two projects – the creation of innovative educational spaces for schoolchildren in the cities of Stryi and Sambor.
Nazar Podolchak proposed a number of ideas that will stimulate the development of STEM education in the Lviv region and can be spread around the country:
- to create on the basis of Tech StartUp School a STEM academy and an online educational platform for training STEM center employees with the possibility of taking practical classes offline;
- to launch a program to support girls in STEM;
- to develop educational programs for extracurricular activities together with Lviv Open Lab;
- to provide mentoring support to STEM-center employees;
- to continue joint projects aimed at getting children interested in STEM fields.
Yaroslav Liubinets (Co-founder and Chairman of the SoftServe Board of Directors), Andrii Pereymybida (Talent Acceleration Center Director at SoftServe), Mykhailo Veselovskyi (Director General of OmegaStrike LLC), Oleksandr Starodub (CEO Spheros – Electron, Member of the Board of Electron PJSC) joined the discussion. It is the business that is the final consumer of educational services, and the guests proved once again: it is necessary to train high-quality staff since school.
Educators Oleh Paska, Ivanna Borodchuk, Sviatoslav Openko, Ivan Pykus, Oleksandr Zakhariiash, and Oksana Savchuk talked about interesting cases and ideas.
The next step is the development of ideas and a second meeting for implementation.
The project on the creation of two STEM centers is being implemented by Tech StartUp School, Lviv Polytechnic, together with Lviv Open Lab, the Network of Youth Spaces «TVORY!», with the support of the United Nations Children’s Fund Office in Ukraine and the financial support of the German government through the KfW German state-owned investment and development bank.
