JROTC STEM Leadership Academy

The JROTC STEM Leadership Academy is becoming STEM Futures – The Leadership & Workforce Academy for JROTC. This six-day residential program engages 9th and 10th grade JROTC cadets in STEM content, skills, and fields of study needed by today’s businesses and industries. The Academy is designed to increase awareness of good-paying STEM career opportunities in the local area and what it takes to secure these jobs. Through five integrated types of activities, the Academy ultimately works to increase the number of JROTC cadets interested in and prepared for the STEM-dependent jobs that are in high demand locally.

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Types of Activities

Teambuilding, Communication, and Leadership Development Activities

Team STEM Design Challenges

University, College, and Educational Field Trips

Industry Site Visits and Guest Speakers

JROTC Cadet Leadership Challenge Activities

In 2018, the Mobile County Public School System was awarded approximately one million dollars from the National Science Foundation’s ITEST (Innovative Technology Experiences for Students and Teachers) to study the short-term and long-term impacts of participation in the program. This webpage is dedicated to showcasing the Academy, the curriculum developed for the Academy, and the resulting impacts (short-term and long-term) on high school students. This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No.1759430.

Academy Short-Term & Long-Term Impacts

Since its inception in 2015, the JROTC STEM Leadership Academy has shown positive impacts in students’ knowledge of mathematics and science content as well as the engineering design process and learning from failure. While the real-world connection (e.g. aerospace, maritime, or advanced manufacturing) changes each year, and the STEM content changes each year, the Academy has shown increased knowledge of math/science content, increased confidence and awareness of teamwork and leadership, and consistently high levels of satisfaction. Full evaluation reports can be provided upon request.

Students in red shirts engaged in STEM workshop.

Academy Design & Framework

This hybrid JCLC + STEM + Workforce Academy was conceived as three distinct, yet interconnected, key components: (1) JROTC, (2) STEM Learning, and (3) Workforce Experiences. The foundation of the model lies in the JROTC character education curriculum and culture. Students who participate in the Academy come with differing levels of the character traits, but all have been exposed to the JROTC culture and curriculum for at least one school year prior to the summer experience. The inputs and outcomes of this component are equivalent to the traditional JCLC camp.

Academy Model Components diagram: Workforce Experiences, STEM Learning and the JROTC Cadet Leadership Challenge overlapping to prepare students for meaningful STEM careers.

The STEM Learning component consists of a series of scaffolded STEM experiences woven through the traditional summer JROTC activities. These STEM lessons extend mathematics and science content knowledge and provide first-hand experience with STEM technology and challenges in order to build interest and efficacy around STEM.

Workforce experiences such as site visits to local colleges and area industries and evening motivational guest speakers, reinforce the JROTC character traits and STEM learning. These workforce experiences are designed to engage students in vicarious STEM learning, meaning students learn about STEM and build a STEM identity by observing expert-level STEM professionals at work.

Hear from our Cadets

2026 JROTC STEM Leadership Academies:

Mobile

Atlanta

Savannah

Group of young cadets posing with vintage aircraft

Lee County

Group of students in blue shirts smiling.

Wiregrass

Dallas

Mesquite

Soldiers inside an armored military vehicle.

San Diego

San Francisco

Curriculum Samples

Click on the topics below to view and download samples of the STEM Curriculum:

Robotics challenge flyer for JROTC STEM Academy.

DoD Scale-Up Project:

Summary of our grant proposal we made to the DOD:
Scaling Up the JROTC STEM Leadership Academy: Leveraging the JROTC Network to Increase the STEM Pipeline

Map showing JROTC network expansion and STEM access by 2025.

In September of 2021, the United States Department of Defense (DoD) awarded the Mobile County Public School System (MCPSS) over six million dollars through its DoD-STEM program to replicate the JROTC STEM Leadership Academy model across the country to new school districts with active JROTC programs.

MCPSS has partnered with STEMWorksII (SWII) to lead the replication site selection process and provide support for Academy implementation; and with the University of Southern Mississippi (USM) to lead the research and reporting to DoD. The long-term goal of this project is to not only implement the Academy model in new sites, but also to help each district build capacity within the local community to sustain the Academy after the grant is concluded.

JROTC STEM Leadership Academy