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50 Fridays · Governor's STEM Challenge

One question.
Three ways in.

Students across New Mexico are asked to use STEM innovation, together with local, traditional, and cultural knowledge, to conserve, protect, manage, or expand our water and natural resources.

In Bernalillo, high school and middle school students will take on this challenge in an afterschool program. They will join with other schools hosting Governor's STEM Challenge teams to show what their Portrait of a Graduate looks like when it is lived, not posted.

Four plants growing from a stone planter labeled Foundation Skills: Artful Intelligence, Friends, Families and Neighbors, Remedios, and Entrepreneurship

What is the Governor's STEM Challenge?

Every year, New Mexico high school teams take on one big question. For 2027, it is:

As digital infrastructure and influence continue to grow, how can we use STEM innovation, along with local, traditional, and cultural knowledge, to conserve, protect, manage, and/or expand New Mexico's limited water and other natural resources while supporting communities, agriculture, and technology?

Old knowledge

Acequias, the hand-dug community ditches, have spread water over fields and refilled the ground for centuries. Water is shared, not just sold.

New technology

Satellite radar now looks beneath the same ground to find leaks, so the state can save water at a scale no one could see before.

Students are the bridge

Students research real needs in their own communities and learn to see themselves as scientists and engineers. A past Bernalillo team listened to Pueblo farmers and built a chile-pepper insecticide for hornworms.

Watch the 8-minute explainer

In 50 Fridays, this question is the project every student works on, whether they compete or build their graduate profile. Here is how the three lenses help.

Three lenses, three things students learn to do

Every student looks at the Challenge through all three. Each lens builds one move.

Students building and tuning colorful pipe chimes with a laptop and notebook

Artful Intelligence, Music & Math

See

Learn to witness: iSEE.

Through music, math, and making, students learn to notice closely: how something sounds, looks, and works. Then they say what they see in someone else's work. That is an iSEE statement.

Students packaging handmade products and planning around a whiteboard

Family, Friends & Neighbors

Say

Learn to claim: iCAN.

Students talk with a family member, a friend, and a neighbor about how water and natural resources touch their work and life. Then they learn to say what they can do, in their own words. That is an iCAN statement.

Students planting and watering a raised community garden bed

Remedios

Make

Learn to make solutions.

Remedios means help, healing, and solutions. Students act on a real local problem, draw on traditional and cultural knowledge, and make something that helps their community.

Six skills, braided through all three

Bernalillo's Portrait of a Graduate names six skills. Each one shows up in every lens, so students practice it three different ways.

Problem Solvers and Critical Thinkers

See · Study a problem closely and weigh solutions.

Say · Bring local knowledge into the question.

Make · Work as a team on a real community problem.

Effective Communicators

See · Listen closely to understand other perspectives.

Say · Speak across cultures and generations.

Make · Share the work in the way that suits the audience.

Adaptable and Productive

See · Notice what is not working and pivot.

Say · Name failure as part of learning.

Make · Keep going through the redesign.

Self-Directed Navigator

See · Break a big task into smaller parts.

Say · Set goals and say where you are headed.

Make · Prioritize and stay on track.

Ingenious Innovators

See · Value different perspectives.

Say · Voice ideas from outside the box.

Make · Create a fresh approach to the problem.

Embraces a Global Perspective

See · Respect what other cultures bring.

Say · Learn from family, community, culture, and history.

Make · Build on where you come from.