Forging Relationships Between Students and Experts: Howard Greene Shares His Vision for STEM Mentorship
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by Lucy Bryan
Every year, the Ohio STEM Learning Network (OSLN) gives an Outstanding Service Award to one individual who “goes above and beyond their role to advance access to quality STEM education for all Ohio students.” In 2024, that honor went to Howard Greene, the Director of Workforce Development and Student Success for Starlab-George Washington Carver Science Park at Ohio State University.
A classically trained engineer, Greene initially pursued a career in medical device development, but he found himself drawn to STEM education. Based on his own experiences, he knew that young people “generally select and thrive in careers because of formative, cross-generational (or at least near-peer) relationships”—and the desire to facilitate that kind of mentoring has guided his vocational journey.
That journey has led Greene to develop multiple programs that bring Ohio State University engineering students into schools across the state. In his current role, he’s created opportunities for students participating in OSLN design challenges to directly interact with experts in the space industry.
To find out more about his work and his vision for STEM mentorship, we asked Greene the following questions.
OSLN Excellence Awards accepting nominations until March 4, 2025
The 2025 award winners will be recognized at the Ohio STEM Innovation Summit on June 3, 2025. Along with being recognized at the Ohio STEM Summit, the winners will be invited to a celebration dinner on June 2, 2025 and to apply to present at the 2026 statewide summit.
Q: You have an educational background in engineering—specifically, you earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in electrical engineering and a Ph.D. in biomedical engineering. Can you share with us some of the early life experiences that made you want to pursue a career in STEM?
A: My Dad was really my STEM mentor. As I grew up, through him I saw the world as a place that had a reason behind everything and that my highest purpose was to be able to look at something and be able to explain “Why?” Why are things the way they are, and why do they behave the way they do? That questioning nature and my Dad’s problem-solving mindset (he could fix anything!) fueled my curiosity about the natural world. I became especially interested in electricity and all that this “invisible force” could do. I would hook up batteries and light bulbs and speakers to all kinds of things around the house. Once, I planted a speaker in the wall behind the refrigerator so that it would play a recording of dogs barking when someone opened the door!
My Dad had a shop in the basement that I was allowed to use after school and on weekends. That shop became the birthplace of many of my creations. Along with my Dad’s mentorship, it gave me the skills and confidence to work with my hands and the materials and tools around me. I was able to create things that didn’t exist—or at least to fix things that were broken or modify things that needed to be repurposed. I think that is when (and where) the seeds to becoming an engineer were planted.
In the sixth grade, I created a maze where a steel ball rolled down several wooden runways “remotely,” turning on motors and lights as it went. My teacher convinced me to enter it in the Science Fair. Needless to say, I was hooked, and that was the start of many years of science fairs and projects! In those competitions, I gained lots of experience communicating, and I enjoyed the satisfaction of explaining the complexities of science to those around me.
My later shift to all things biomedical was fueled by my utter amazement in finding that there were many different kinds of electrical circuits in the human body. I found it fascinating that there were circuits for sensing the world around us as well as controlling our muscles—indeed, that our very brains are a huge mass of interconnected neurons, all communicating with electrical signals, giving rise to thoughts, sensation, and emotions!
Q: From 2012 to 2023, you served as the Director of K-12 Education Outreach for the College of Engineering at Ohio State University. Can you describe a few of the projects or initiatives you spearheaded in that role that make you particularly proud?
A: At some point, I realized that I became an engineer because I had had someone significant in my life (my Dad) to give me the guidance and confidence—and circumstances—to grow into that career. But, after college and earning my a PhD in Biomedical Engineering, and as I continued on in my career in medical device development at Battelle, I had this nagging thought: What about all of the kids out there who have the basic skills and curiosity to be an engineer but lack that STEM mentor to give them the encouragement and formative experiences to move them along that path? Building a bridge between career mentors and youth seemed like a powerful way to form these relationships, and I thought about ways to bring STEM mentors into the lives of youth. It took an inspirational dream—one that I attribute to God’s directive—for me to finally do something about it! I transitioned back to OSU where, indeed, most of the initiatives I have since created have brought STEM mentors together with students who are missing that mentor.
One program I am particularly proud of, now in its 12th year at OSU, is called Translating Engineering Research to K-8 (TEK8). The program gives paid summer research internships to undergraduate engineering students with the agreement that they will take an ensuing course in the fall that has them creating low-cost, age-appropriate, research-inspired design challenges, which they then team deliver at Metro Middle School, an underserved Columbus school. These sixth-grade students get their first hands-on experiences of engineering with near-peer mentors as guides. They learn to solve problems, gain confidence, and immersively engage in the “identify-design-build-test-modify” process of engineering. The college students learn how to be effective communicators and ambassadors of their early career experiences and (hopefully) become wired to continue on in this ambassador role throughout their careers.
Another program, Hometown Ambassadors, had teams of undergraduate OSU engineering students go back to their hometown high schools across the State to talk about their engineering college experiences and answer questions from high schoolers. Many times, this involved relating experiences that high school students wouldn’t otherwise know about, such as industry internships or undergraduate research. They planned these events in conjunction with a pre-identified liaison at the high school who had expressed an interest in having this team, now in engineering at OSU, come back and engage “as ambassadors” with students a few years behind them.
Photo: A TEK8 mentor helps a student at Metro Middle School
Q: In July 2023, you became the Director of STEM Education and Outreach for Starlab George Washington Carver Science Park (GWCSP). For readers who may not be familiar with Starlab or GWCSP, can you explain what they are?
Starlab is the next generation commercial, U.S.-based space station that will replace the International Space Station, which is slated to be decommissioned in 2030. Under contract from NASA, a host of partners led by Voyager Space and AirBus are developing Starlab, which will launch in 2028. OSU is a strategic partner that will host the U.S.-based ground location for Starlab, including a high-fidelity model of Starlab at the University Airport. This facility will offer payload development, integration, and testing, as well as astronaut training for Starlab. Perhaps even more exciting is an adjacent, up to 80-acre science park called the George Washington Carver Science Park. Due to micro-gravity and the near-complete vacuum environment that exists in low-Earth orbit, there are many things we can learn and many processes we can execute in developing new materials, pharmaceuticals, and agriculture that cannot happen in a 1G environment on the surface of the Earth. For these reasons, this science park will house many commercial and some government and academic clients positioned to benefit from research and development in the unique environment offered by low-Earth orbit.
Q: What does your current job entail, and how are you drawing upon your previous experiences as you pioneer this new role?
A: My current job entails developing the next generation workforce that will tackle the challenges of research and discovery on Starlab. One of the facets of this job involves engaging youth in both formal and informal education venues across the K-PhD continuum to build awareness of careers and associated opportunities and to prepare students for those careers. I believe that preparing youth for careers hinges on them seeing themselves in those careers and believing that they can contribute. A career choice is part of one’s identity. I also believe that the best way for youth to develop this confidence is through mentoring relationships with career professionals who are willing to relationally come alongside them. Career professionals who are passionate about what they do are in a powerful position to guide, support, and inspire youth as mentors.
Q: Every year, Ohio STEM Learning Network hosts a design challenge that invites students from across the state to tackle a unique problem. The 2023-2024 challenge asked students to develop a plan, system, or product to support the physical and mental health of individuals living in space for an extended period of time. The 2024-2025 challenge, which launched in September, asks students to develop a plan, system, or product to improve the sustainability of life in low-Earth orbit (such as living aboard the Starlab space station). You’ve been involved in these design challenges. Can you talk about your contributions and what you think students get out of participating in OSLN design challenges?
A: I believe that design challenges provide the closest environments to real-word problem solving that we can offer, especially when those challenges are team-based, have experiential components, and occur over weeks or months. This is precisely the context of the OSLN Design Challenge and the reason we at OSU partnered with OSLN. However, we knew that there was much more we could offer than helping to formulate a space-based design challenge statement.
At Starlab – GWCSP, we have deep relationships with space career professionals across the globe: the engineers, scientists, designers, policy experts, and business professionals who introduce new technologies and develop space solutions everyday. The question for us became, “How can we bring together in an impactful way these passionate space experts with students who are working on a design challenge?” It was clear that any effective solution needed to engage a global network of people who could connect with classrooms remotely and in a “just in time” capacity—that is, when students had questions and needed their expertise.
So, “Starlab ExpertLink” was born in the fall of 2023. We reached out to our networks in academia, government, and industry and put forward the proposition that if you had 4-5 hours of time to give remotely—from your desk and over a three-month period of time—we would form a custom panel to which classrooms across the State of Ohio could ask questions and get guidance on the challenge. To get the word out, I attended several space conferences and posted the opportunity on LinkedIn. Experts have also come to us by word of mouth as colleagues share how much fun they have had.
Early panel sessions tend to be simple “context-setting” Q&As, as students attempt to get their arms around the problem statement and the unique environment of microgravity and low-Earth orbit. But as relationships form and the same panel repeatedly connects with the classroom, there is guidance and encouragement offered, feedback on conceptual approaches, and even reviews of designs that sometimes take the shape of a prototype or model. In later sessions, panelists find themselves interacting in smaller groups and having one-on-few conversations in which they relate how and why they chose their careers. What is interesting to watch is a new accountability develop between students and their Experts. Students want to be responsive to the ideas and guidance of these Experts—and suddenly, the teacher feels off-loaded to not have to be the subject matter expert for the challenge. But the most exciting development for me has been watching these Experts learn and grow to interact effectively with K-12 students. They affirm, encourage, and gently guide them in ways that are entirely age-appropriate and empathetic to their journeys.
What was unknown to me at the outset of this “experiment” was whether these two worlds— K-12 classrooms and the professional world—could effectively meet on a “bridge” that had seemingly never been created before. And the answer has been a resounding “YES” that leaves me trying to figure out how we can expand the program outside of Ohio and also into informal education!
Q: You also serve on the Governing Board of Metro Early College High School, a STEM school that serves a diverse group of students from across the state. What insights into improving access to STEM education has this experience given you?
Metro is indeed a great innovator in public STEM education, and I have had many opportunities over the last 14 years to collaborate with them on STEM initiatives—the TEK8 program that I described earlier being one of them. Metro is not afraid to prototype new and exciting collaborations with partner organizations, many of whom are new to the STEM education conversation. Metro truly does great things with ALL youth! So much of what goes on in STEM education around the state started as a pilot program at Metro. The diverse student body in the context of non-selective admission makes it ideal for innovations that are replicable across the state and country.
Q: Much of your work has involved connecting K-12 students with researchers and professionals in STEM fields. Why do you think these experiences are important to both students and the experts who spend time with them?
A: I think people generally select and thrive in careers because of formative, cross-generational (or at least near-peer) relationships that were formed while they were young. I gained confidence in my abilities to problem solve because of the experiences and encouragement given me by my Dad, but many students point to relationships with teachers or counselors. Someone believed in them and gave them glimpses of what they could be and do. I think the mistaken assumption is that an effective mentoring relationship is so time intensive that it cannot exist when one is in the prime of their career. What we saw with Starlab ExpertLink is that it can be done with a modest time investment at any phase of one’s career.
Q: Do you have any exciting new projects or initiatives on the horizon? Looking ahead, what kinds of opportunities do you hope Starlab GWCSP will be able to offer K-12 students in Ohio?
YES! I am always dreaming of new ways to reach youth and connect them with career professionals. Right now, we are collaborating with the Keystone Space Collaborative on a proposal to the Appalachian Regional Commission that involves 4-H across three states: Ohio, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia. If successful, this workforce development initiative will expand our reach to informal education across those three states. It is similar to our work with OSLN in that it will engage space professionals who come alongside youth tackling space-based design challenges. Our work also touches down right here in Central Ohio. We recently won a Battelle Central Ohio STEM grant that will result in a space-based K-8 summer camp at St. Stephen’s Community House in Linden—complete with an Expert network to assist youth in a design challenge, a portable planetarium, and a Community Showcase at the end!
About this piece: This interview was edited by Lucy Bryan for the Ohio STEM Learning Network. Read more about the author and her work at: https://www.lucybryan.com/
The post Forging Relationships Between Students and Experts: Howard Greene Shares His Vision for STEM Mentorship appeared first on Ohio STEM Learning Network.
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