Gerald Dennis knows Mount Vernon.
He grew up two blocks from Longfellow Middle School on South Second Avenue in the 1970s, and his mother still lives in the neighborhood.
While briefly out of work after several decades in the corporate world ”” including positions at Xerox and IBM ”” Dennis came across a news story that addressed the struggles of the same public school system he passed through decades earlier. According to a 2012 New York Times report, just 32 percent of Mount Vernon public school students passed the eighth-grade science Regents exam and just 30 percent of the city”™s eighth-graders passed the Regents math exam the previous school year. Though he had since moved out of his hometown, he felt he had to act.
“I was devastated by how poorly the kids were doing,” Dennis said. “It just made me look at myself and what could be done. I wanted to make a difference.”
In 2012, he founded the Mount Vernon Technology & Science Youth Center for Advancement, soon to be the Northeast STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) Starter Academy at Mount Vernon (NSSA), a nonprofit education center meant to encourage interest and foster future careers in STEM fields. The reason for the name change, Dennis said, was to market the academy to students throughout the Northeast, not just in Mount Vernon. Its main target: at-risk middle and high school students.
Since it began full operation last August, the academy has hosted five STEM programs, which include everything from robotics instruction to computer coding to visits to the Regeneron laboratories in Greenburgh.
Mount Vernon Public Schools has allowed NSSA to host its programs free-of-charge at its facilities, but as the program continues to expand and grow, Dennis and his 14-member board have outlined plans for a $40 million, 140,000-square-foot-facility fit with computer labs and other resources to serve as a regional hub for STEM education.
The roughly 9,100 Mount Vernon public school students would visit the proposed 140,000-square-foot center at least twice per year for a three-hour guided tour. Tutoring and mentoring programs as after-school, weekend and summer classes ”” all free of charge ”” would be available to students.
Dennis said he has not yet found a location for the center, but hoped to utilize a property accessible by subway, commuter rail and bus.
He said an initial fundraising goal of $150 million by NSSA was a bit ambitious, but said the organization is still hoping to raise $50 million that will cover the construction cost of the facility. All fundraising that has been done thus far has gone toward funding its programs, which are offered free to area students. Last year, the organization won several small grants from Entergy and MasterCard, and private fundraising efforts over a 10-day period brought in $15,000 toward a STEM camp.
This fall, NSSA will launch its first major fundraising and social media campaign, which Dennis hopes will raise several million dollars.
“There”™s no reason Mount Vernon should have a 25 percent higher dropout rate than neighboring towns like Scarsdale, Bronxville, Pelham, New Rochelle,” he said. “But even more importantly, we want to address learning exposure. Access breeds great opportunity.”
“The biggest difference we can provide children is access they can”™t get because of the constraints in the public school system,” he said.
Programs range from fifth to 11th grade,and will be coordinated in a partnership with Mount Vernon schools. Both Mount Vernon”™s mayor and superintendent have backed the organization”™s efforts, Dennis said.
From Aug. 10 to 21, the academy will host STEM II, where 29 students from the STEM I course will learn the design, construction and programming of robots as well as genomics.
Beginning Aug. 17, the academy will also host a weeklong intensive program for fifth-graders that will introduce them to science, technology and engineering and mathematics as potential career paths. The other goal, Dennis said, was to encourage four-year college degree program enrollment for the students who pass through the academy.
“We want to drive younger people to a greater interest in science, see greater performance in schools and promote college majors in STEM endeavors,” Dennis said. “Those are the driving factors that excite us the most.”
