When Levi’s Stadium, Santa Clara, Calif., opened in 2014 the National Football League’s (NFL) San Francisco 49ers expected to host hundreds of thousands of football fans. But they also had designs on welcoming hundreds of thousands of area students to the venue via a STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) education curriculum based around the stadium and football. That plan has seen so much success the 49ers have started EDU Academy, an arm of the 49ers organization that offers education strategy consulting services to venues around the world.
“Our focus is in helping create learning opportunities for young people anywhere and everywhere they can exist,” said Jesse Lovejoy, program director. “We are helping organizations build and deliver education programs designed to ensure the impact is authentic and real to benefit everybody involved.”
The STEM program originated in a section of the stadium designed from its opening as a classroom to welcome 60,000 students per year to learn science, technology, engineering and math. From the start, Lovejoy said other venues from around the country contacted him to learn what made his program a success. “My phone rings three to four times a week with people asking questions about everything we do and all the elements,” he said. “It got to the point where it was a significant portion of the work I was doing. More and more organizations were asking very detailed and layered nuanced questions about launching programs. We realized quite a few organizations want to do this and don’t know how.”
Lovejoy said the time he was spending helping offer advice in all the informal requests was sucking up his time, and as a way to help offset the funds the York family, owners of the 49ers, were donating to run the educational program, he launched the academy. But more than the money, he wants to help more organizations and venues create opportunities to engage with their local educational community.
In the new plan, Lovejoy said his services come in two steps. The initial step helps venues understand what they need to know to bring a program online and the second piece delivers a roadmap on any piece of the program they want to pursue.
Lovejoy believes sports offers an amazing platform to access kids on differing levels. Using sports as a lever for access to students gives both organizations and venues a unique opportunity. And it isn’t always about the intrigue of the sport or even the space in the venue, Lovejoy said, instead advising venues to focus on a passion to tell a story and serve teachers and students. “I always tell folks if you have a commitment to doing this, it doesn’t matter if you have 5,000 square feet that doesn’t exist yet or 500 square feet stuffed full of books and desks,” Lovejoy said about creating STEM space within new and existing venues. “It is not about the space, it is about the intent. What do you have that can intrigue kids? We can work from there.”
For the 49ers, the first professional sports team with a classroom in their stadium, they expanded within Levi’s Stadium after the success of the first year, retrofitting an underused portion of the stadium. “I do always advocate for a distinct space to use as a classroom,” he said.
For the 49ers, they incorporated classroom space into the Levi’s Stadium museum, using football as the hook to incorporate labs on sports and science. The 20,000-sq.-ft. 49ers museum—composed of galleries, statues, a theater and the learning space—sits near additional interactive galleries for the STEM students. As part of the STEM program, students take a tour of the museum, enjoy up to 90 minutes of STEM project lessons—covering anything from force to physics—and even a 60-minute movement lab where students go through non-contact football drills on the field’s apron.
The STEM curriculum uses the stadium and the football played in it to connect with students, whether breaking down how the stadium captures solar power and uses it or using reclaimed water to feed the grass.
Lovejoy said the key is taking something you do well and articulating it where kids can go see, touch, smell and feel that stuff, which can turn it into compelling lessons. It is about the commitment to giving a great experience.” The 49ers extended its in-venue effort to an in-school STEM Leadership Institute in local middle and high schools, a $1 million extension of the program that funds lab spaces and programs.
Lovejoy said they realized the opportunity to launch EDU Academy last year and started taking clients—“it was just us helping folks”—even before the company existed. Since officially launching the academy in May with strategic partners in the architectural space, the 49ers’ EDU Academy has landed five clients, although not all are public.
Kat Williams, board chair at the International Women’s Baseball Center in West Virginia, said working with Lovejoy has proven amazing so far. As the center looks to fundraise $7 million for a new venue, which will include a STEM component, the center has already engaged EDU Academy to write curriculum that will help it connect with local schools even before the venue comes online.
“We want to present it to teachers and then incorporate it into the building,” said Williams, a college professor.
The center hopes to have curriculum in place for use next fall, ahead of the three-year plan for a new venue. “For me, for us, the education is a vehicle, a way to take baseball and teach math and science. We clearly want to preserve and protect the legacy of women in baseball, but even more importantly, we want to use that as empowerment for girls.”
The success of the STEM space in Levi’s Stadium has put a spotlight on the power to connect venues to the community through student learning opportunities. The 49ers want to shine that spotlight even brighter.