Steve Krak

STEM Consultant

Steve Krak is a “STEMist.” He has integrated traditional STEM silos over a 25-year history as an engineer in photonics and microfabrication, program manager, project manager, group manager, intellectual property manager, and business developer at Battelle, the world’s largest independent R&D company. While at Battelle, he helped to stand up the Ohio STEM Learning Network as a program manager for four years.

Steve brings this experience to TIES as a STEM Consultant who plays a leadership role in a successful USAID project to design and stand up the first STEM schools in Egypt and facilitating the work of STEM Learning Ecosystem communities building coherence in their education pathways.

“A team of Egyptian students prototyped a communication device designed for women to reduce the prevalence of sexual harassment. Their pride was inspiring and transformed me.

His specialties are systems, design and capstone programs from design to implementation. In addition to the Ohio STEM Learning Network, Steve helped other states initiate STEM networks, managed winning Ohio’s Race to the Top proposal team, and was a member of the National Academies Committee on Integrated STEM Education, which published STEM Integration in K-12 Education.

Steve has three patents and co-authored eight technical publications. When he’s not supporting TIES, he works part time at Denison University as the coordinator of a new cross-curricular design lab for students, faculty and staff. I mentor students in the use of design thinking, engineering design processes and other tools from industry as they strengthen their problem-solving skills.

More About Me

I Bet You Didn’t Know

I play saxophone and a nerdy, wind-controlled synthesizer with jazz groups and church groups. As a volunteer at my local school, I assist the jazz band director and mentor a team of students participating in a community arts collaborative project.

What I Love About My Job

I get to learn from colleagues, communities, teachers and students – all of whom bring something important to each others’ life-long learning. TIES has a mix of educators and engineers, and I love working where that diversity is used to generate solutions based on classroom experience, research and real-world relevance.

A Transforming Moment

During the implementation of a STEM School in Egypt, I had the opportunity to share with the school’s teachers, leaders and Egypt’s Ministry of Education representatives that their integrated capstones program had made an impact in the U.S. This team had worked extremely hard to design, implement and improve the capstone initiative. I explained that the Egypt template had been recently used by MC2 STEM School in Cleveland, OH (another TIES project) to inform the re-design of their capstones. To see the pride on every face was joyous for me and this validation of their work was transformational.
Senior high students at a STEM School in Egypt were working on their fifth semester-long capstone project of their choice. A team of girls chose to prototype a communication device designed for women to reduce the prevalence of sexual harassment, a pervasive problem in their country. Their team shirt included a logo of a forlorn, angelic female symbolizing their target audience and their own emotions regarding the problem they were solving. The pride in their accomplishment was inspiring. It might be that watching this project develop transformed me more than it did these marvelous young ladies.