STEM Opportunity Library
Check out our STEM Opportunity Library- a list of afterschool, summer programs, internship and job opportunities for youth in Massachusetts! By increasing awareness of existing programs, we hope to increase access to STEM programming and encourage students to explore opportunities for STEM careers. Scroll down to see some highlights of opportunities in Massachusetts, or click the button to view the full library.
Don’t see your STEM program listed? Email claire@massafterschool.org to get your program into our library!
Summer STEM Programs
Check out these opportunities to learn more about STEM during the summer months!
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Acera’s STEAM summer camp enables kids ages 5 to 14 to tackle enticing challenges – from drawing and coding to physics and film making – individually and in groups. Sessions run in mornings, afternoons, or for full days. We are pleased to announce that our Summer 2024 brochure is now ready for viewing. Please find a full list of offerings below. Registration for our summer camps opens at noon on Sunday, 12/17.
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The CitySprouts Green Team Summer Program (formerly the Summer Young Leaders Program) is a free opportunity designed for rising 5-8th graders to learn gardening, cooking, and leadership skills while working and spending time outdoors. Youth learn to be leaders and stewards in their community through a combination of garden work, STEAM-focused projects, and field trips to outdoor spaces within their community. By working on local urban farms and gardens and meeting with community leaders, the program aims to provide youth the opportunity to identify issues they are passionate about and envision an endless array of possibilities for their future.
All CitySprouts summer programs run Monday-Friday, 9AM-2PM, are free to Boston and Cambridge families and include free daily lunch and weekly field trips.
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Don’t miss their nationally-recognized STEM summer camps just for girls entering 4th-8th grades in 2024-2025. All Girlstart camps include a balance of hands-on STEM activities, relevant technology, collaborative team building, and informal camp fun!
Camps are $450. You’ll receive a $55 discount if you register during the month of February! Camps fill up fast, so they suggest registering early.
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Greenagers offers a variety of programming, including field trips, in-school, afterschool, and summer programming.
For their middle school summer programs, students spend a week exploring the Western Mass' hiking trails, waterways, farms, and forests. Each day they explore a different topic with a field trip tailored to the group. Transportation, participation and liability waivers will be required to participate. Click here to learn more!
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(Peru, MA) Eagle Eye Institute's organizational PURPOSE is to offer learning programs and opportunities for primarily Black and Brown youth to experience well-being, belonging and empowerment through a relationship with nature. Their STRATEGY is to build the commitment and capacity of individuals and organizations, involved in youth development and the environment, and to identify and remove barriers to accessing nature.
Eagle Eye offers The Learn About Forests™ program, a full-day of nature immersion that introduces youth to the beauty and peace of nature. It is an intentional experience that brings 12 to 15 youth and young adults between the ages of 8 and 24 to a natural site for hands-on lessons with natural resource professionals, games, team-building, and stewardship.
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Do you like science, but maybe your grades don't always reflect it? Our four-day summer program is an on-campus, low-pressure science and engineering program for girls entering ninth grade in the fall. (We are NOT residential, so local students only, please!)
The program provides an introductory sampling of hands-on science and engineering activities mixed with high school preparatory sessions. This is a program that is centered on small group interactions, hands-on learning opportunities (with extensive materials needs) and near-peer mentoring with MIT college students. Girls build motorized LEGO® cars, experiment with strobe-light photography, “breed” with LEGO fish cells to understand the relationships between genes and traits, and more. Any girl from the greater Boston area who can commute to our program on the MIT campus is eligible to attend.
There is a suggested materials donation of $100.00.
The program runs from 8:30am- 2:30pm. Families are expected to be responsible for transportation to and from the MIT campus. Time is set aside each day for a brown bag lunch break.
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(Burlington) Einstein's workshop is dedicated to inspiring children in their exploration of STEAM – Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, and Math.
Their lessons help students explore, grow, and gain confidence in STEAM topics. Our students gain the ability to navigate and succeed in our increasingly tech-driven society.
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(Holyoke) Girls Inc. empowers, educates, and guides young people forward, helping them navigate the challenges in their lives. Through intentional and effective programming, both in school and after school, we focus on the development of the whole individual – while helping to harness the power already within them. The combination of long-lasting mentoring relationships, a pro-girl environment, and research-based programming equips youth to navigate gender, economic, and social barriers, and grow up healthy, educated, and independent.
Eureka! is their intensive, five-year STEM-based program for rising 8th graders all the way to their senior year in high school. The Eureka! “scholars” study with professors on campus at UMass in their classrooms and labs, out in the field and beyond. The program also builds skills and confidence by incorporating physical fitness, personal development, and college and career readiness. It’s a “whole-student” approach, in other words, and the program’s impact accumulates each year. Eureka! changes lives, emboldens youth, and builds futures.
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(Nantucket) MMA's Summer Discovery Camp Programs are dedicated to developing knowledge and interest in the outdoor world, connecting youth to Nantucket’s local environment, and inspiring action to protect our natural world.
Campers have the opportunity to participate in activities such as beach exploration, snorkeling, seining, kayaking, discovery hikes, wetland studies, survival skill instruction, live animal programs, orienteering, nature related games, art projects, insect collecting, and more! -
YSP offers future scientists and engineers a unique opportunity for a hands-on research experience while still in high school. This free program is open to Massachusetts residents (within commuter distance) who have completed their junior year of high school (i.e. rising seniors). Students have the opportunity to do:
Laboratory Research
Career Exploration
Field Trips
And more!
Afterschool STEM Programs
Take a look at these opportunities to participate in afterschool programs and learn more about STEM!
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ARTSF: Academic-artists Reaching Towards Success Foundation (Brockton) is dedicated to providing a holistic approach to academic-artists (youth-led) programs. Our mission is to encourage academic-artists to express themselves positively and gain sustainable skills that aid in academic, community, and life success—cultivating a safe environment for academic artists to express their artistic abilities while providing mentors and internships to create individualized portfolios.
Their youth programs support students in exploring careers that connect the arts with science, technology, engineer, and mathematics. Click here to learn more.
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(Amesbury) Code & Circuit is a place where kids can learn about technology, use it to create, and have fun in the process! Experience their unique, hands-on, interactive approach to STEAM-inspired explorations. Their programs are designed to inspire and encourage creativity, collaboration and critical thinking. Based in Amesbury, Code & Circuit offers courses for kids in grades K-12.
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(Pittsfield) The mission of Flying Cloud Institute is to inspire young people and educators through dynamic science and art experiences that ignite creativity.
They have a variety of afterschool programs, including Young Women in Science, Makerspaces, and SMART Labs. Click here to learn more.
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Join MITES Saturdays (formerly SEED Academy) to gain an exciting, challenging foundation in STEM through our multi-year program for 7th–12th graders in Boston, Cambridge, and Lawrence, MA public schools. Applicants should have a strong academic record and interest in science, engineering, and technology. There’s no minimum GPA required to apply, but students are expected to maintain letter grades of A and B to stay in the program.
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The MGH Youth Scholars Program supports students in grades 9 through 12 by promoting educational attainment for students in Boston, Chelsea and Revere. The program works to increase students’ interest in science and healthcare, spark college aspirations and preparedness, and aims to support Scholars to succeed academically in high school, graduate from college, and enter the workforce with a strong sense of academic fortitude and confidence.
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Sociedad Latina's STEAM Team: Our year-round afterschool and summer middle school programming integrates education and enrichment to boost academic achievement, support science, technology, engineering, arts, and math (STEAM) engagement, build social-emotional skills, and explore careers in STEM-based professions. Youth receive homework help from college tutors and use STEAM to address community issues through service-learning projects. Our youth also have the opportunity to celebrate their cultures and create positive relationships with adults. Many of our middle school youth transition into our Youth Leader program upon entering high school.
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sySTEMic flow® emerged from the dedication to inspire and support young Black girls and women in furthering their love for Science, Technology, Engineering or Mathematics (STEM). They offer a variety of STEM Educational Programs. You can read more about them here!
Career Readiness Opportunities
Check out these opportunities to learn more about STEM-based career readiness programs, including apprenticeships, internships, and more!
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(Newton) This is a specialized program to prepare Boston-area and Worcester-area high school students for paid summer internships in the life sciences. Selected high school students from metro-Boston build technical knowledge, lab techniques, research-based thinking and professional skills over eight weeks to prepare them for paid summer internships in academic labs and life science companies.
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If you’re passionate about the sciences and are a domestic student currently in your junior year of high school, we invite you to apply for the Research in Science & Engineering (RISE) program. You will spend six weeks at BU conducting university laboratory research with some of the nation’s brightest scientific minds while advancing your STEM knowledge and skills.
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The Young Empowered Scientists for ContinUed Research Engagement (YES for CURE) Program is a three-year training initiative for highly motivated high school and undergraduate students interested in pursuing a career in scientific research. Through engagement in mentored summer research projects, participation in an advanced scientific curriculum during the academic year, and year-round professional skills training, students will acquire scientific knowledge and technical skills, and increase their understanding of how to conduct biomedical research. This initiative is funded through an R25 grant from the National Cancer Institute (NCI CA221738).
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The Education Cooperative (TEC) Internship Program is a selective career exploration placement program supporting junior and senior high school students and college students in the Boston Metrowest area. For over 15 years we have developed outstanding relationships with highly sought after businesses, organizations and public sector employers, who serve as mentors for our internship students.
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The Technical Trades Work and Learning Program places students from vocational high schools, After Dark programs and CTI programs into paid clean energy job trainings during the academic year.
Why should you be a Technical Trades Intern?
Receive valuable work experience as you begin your career in the fast-growing clean energy sector
Get paid for your work during the academic year
Make connections with clean energy professionals
Enhance your potential for future employment
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As one of the top employers of the annual Summer Jobs Program, Mass General provides meaningful summer employment opportunities to more than 230 youth, a commitment we’ve made since 1991. Mass General employs students from Boston, Chelsea and Revere. The departments and health centers that employ Summer Jobs students range from Anesthesia and the Center for Regenerative Medicine to the Charlestown, Chelsea and Revere HealthCare Centers to the Tissue Engineering Lab. As part of their summer experience at Mass General, students learn about jobs in health and science fields through weekly professional development and skills workshops.
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(North Shore) MassHire is now working under a grant from the Executive Office of Education to increase STEM Internships for High School Students. This grant will cover the wages for students to complete 100 hours internships in STEM. These early opportunities to explore STEM careers are vital to improve the talent pipeline for STEM companies in Massachusetts.
MassHire is partnering with North Shore Technology Council and North Shore Innoventures on this initiative, and we will be looking for employers to host up to 96 student interns across the North Shore for the spring and summer of 2023. Interested employers can contact us to learn more!
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Over summer, the Museum of Science offers paid internship opportunities for teens. Internships are available in education spaces and behind the scene roles where you will learn how the museum operates and gain valuable skills through your work and professional development workshops.
Eligibility: Applicants must be between the ages of 14-19 and currently enrolled in a High School or equivalent program.
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The Summer Teen Internship Program offers paid opportunities, giving teens aged 14 and older a chance to challenge themselves and learn useful skills while having fun and meeting new friends.
Teens will gain valuable skills, while making new friends and protecting the blue planet.
Gain extensive training in marine science, climate science, public speaking, and customer service
Build skills, including time management and responsibility
Participate weekly in a required professional development course and an ocean advocacy course
Optional behind-the-scenes workshops and weekly social meetings
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(Woods Hole, Massachusetts) provides a path for underrepresented minorities into marine and environmental sciences. Rising juniors and seniors conduct 10-week research projects with scientists at NOAA’s Northeast Fisheries Science Center and at other partner institutions in Woods Hole.