Racial Justice STEAM Collective

Open Innovation Challenge 2025

Join us in May 2025 for the Racial Justice STEAM Collective (RJSC) Open Innovation Challenge! This year’s youth-focused event will take place in the Fargo-Moorhead area.

This program centers on empowering Black, Indigenous, and people of color youth ages 15-18 and 19-23. Participants will come together to brainstorm solutions to an issue at the intersection of race/culture and science, technology, engineering, art, and math (STEAM). The format is similar to a hackathon, except that rather than working on a computer and engineering, students are encouraged to collaborate and ideate directly, using a variety of means to deliver their solutions, including presentations, models, posters, zines, and more.

What will the topic be? Join us for Conversation Cafe events on Sept. 21 and Sept. 22, 2024, to discuss issues facing your community. After concluding the Conversation Cafe sessions, the RJSC will select a topic based on relevance to the community and begin research efforts into that topic and relevant partner acquisition. Once we have identified the issue at hand, we will begin the Open Innovation planning and delivery, with the goal of hosting the event in May 2025! Fill out an interest form here for more information, or email Angel Swann at aswann@smm.org with questions.

About the RJSC’s Youth Summit 2024

Over the course of two Saturdays in March 2024, youth participants came to the Science Museum of Minnesota to explore the many intersections of race and health, engineering, environmental justice, and technology.

At the March 16 event, participants learned about the intersections of race and engineering with partners from the University of Minnesota Libraries, then dug into race and environmental justice with social justice advocate and teaching artist Eshay Brantley. 

In the March 30 session, participants took a look at the intersections of race and data with Shayna Karuman and Marika Pfefferkorn, supported with a zine from Sophie Wang, then investigated the intersection of race and health care with a variety of Black, Indigenous, and people of color health care professionals and circle keepers.

How did it go? Explore feedback provided from youth participants here.

History of the Racial Justice STEAM Collective

The relationships and projects of the RJSC grew from the Science Museum of Minnesota’s long-standing commitment to working through the lens of race. Several of the future RJSC members served as consultants and advisors in the development of the RACE: Are We So Different exhibition. These networks continued to expand as we developed smaller footprint RACE models in partnership with organizations in the Twin Cities, Fargo-Moorhead, Rochester, and Worthington. 

By exploring deep relationships and trust-building through consistent engagement, these relationships evolved into what became the RJSC. Through initial funding from the National Science Foundation, this group created youth leadership development programs, podcasts, and digital board games. Check out some of the results of that work here.

With support from the Association of Science and Technology Centers’ Cultivating Community Science Stipends program, the RJSC is now working to develop youth-focused racial justice workshops that travel throughout the Great Lakes region. The RJSC is committed to repositioning museums as learners, supporters, and facilitators — rather than the sole experts, teachers, and holders of knowledge — while community members are repositioned as the primary decision-makers and deliverers of empowerment and expertise.

Meet the Racial Justice STEAM Collective members

The RJSC’s work is built on the cross-regional connections of our group members. 

Fargo-Moorhead 

  • Jered Pigeon - Director of Diversity & Inclusion at Minnesota State University Moorhead; business owner

  • Frederick Edwards Jr. - Co-founder of Umoja writing workshops, Bush fellow, youth development professional, motivational speaker, community educator, and spoken word artist from North Minneapolis

Twin Cities

  • Marika Pfefferkorn - Co-founder and Solutions and Sustainability Officer at Twin Cities Innovation Alliance

  • Nathasha Chandrasekharan - Program/research administrator at University of Minnesota Department of Pediatrics, STEAM educator, youth development professional

  • Shayna Karuman - Community organizer, artist, co-founder of Fargo’s Asian Night Market

  • Charly Vang, MPH - Data scientist, Hennepin Healthcare Research Institute 

Rochester 

Goals of the Racial Justice STEAM Collective

The RJSC’s long-term goals are to utilize our cross-regional connections to bring youth-focused racial justice summits to every community that our group members represent. By developing a framework or toolkit that demonstrates our deep model of power-sharing, we aim to change the museum and educational fields through:  

  • Mentorship models | Creating new entryways to the STEAM-pipeline, support career development, and support ongoing community efforts

  • Project expansion | Developing a network of Black, Indigenous, and people of color STEAM professionals that grows beyond our initial regions and allows participants and contributors access to a wider group of individuals, experiences, and opportunities

  • Self-sustainability | Transitioning this work to being driven by partners, individuals, and organizations.

What are the impacts on participants and community members?

  • Empowerment to the level of autonomy: We want participants to walk away recognizing the power that they have to make a difference in their communities.

  • Collaboration and power-sharing experience: Power-sharing models and community-first engagement practices can change the way participants think about collaboration, project management, and what it means for projects to be by community and for community.

  • Access to resources, connections, and research that allow deeper connections between participants, the partnering organizations, and individual STEAM professionals.