Letters to a Pre-Scientist is on a mission to broaden students’ awareness of STEM through snail mail

On this episode of Questions of the Day, I traveled to Takoma Park, Maryland, to speak with Lucy Madden, founding CEO of Letters to a Pre-Scientist (LPS), about how a classroom pen pal experiment grew into a national STEM engagement initiative spanning 17 states.   At the center of the organization is a deceptively simple model: middle school students exchange four handwritten letters over the course of a school year with STEM professionals from around the world. Madden described the program as “a year long snail mail pen pal program that connects middle school students in low income schools with a very diverse worldwide network of STEM professionals.”   

But beneath that simplicity is a carefully constructed system built around teacher partnerships, volunteer training, accessibility accommodations, and long-term relationship building. Throughout the interview, Madden repeatedly returned to a core tension many nonprofit founders face: how to scale impact without eroding quality. She acknowledged that the organization could grow more quickly, but doing so would “compromise the quality of the programming because of funding.”   Instead, she said the organization has focused on refining one model over time, emphasizing that “at the program’s core, it’s been the same since the beginning.”  

What emerged most clearly from our conversation was that the organization is attempting to intervene at the level of identity and perception as much as education itself. Madden described how students often begin the year imagining scientists as people “blowing things up in labs using microscopes, wearing lab coats,” but by the end are drawing “much more interesting, specific things” like “a STEM professional outside, collecting a sample at a volcano or underwater.”   The organization’s evaluation data suggests that students who initially report little interest in STEM show some of the strongest shifts by the end of the program, with roughly 25% later reporting interest in STEM pathways.   

Madden repeatedly emphasized that the program’s humanizing element is central to its success. “The surprise to learn that my STEM professional has a dog, or like, plays video games just like me,” she said, helps students see scientists as relatable people rather than distant experts.   At the same time, she told me many scientists are surprised by how meaningful the exchange becomes for them personally. Researchers often leave the program “feeling personally reinvigorated in your own career” after hearing from students who tell them “your work is cool” and “that sounds important.”   In many ways, the letters function as a reflective practice for scientists themselves, forcing them to explain not only what they do, but why it matters.

I also asked Madden about her participation in the inaugural Simons Foundation fellowship cohort, which she described as a rare opportunity to step away from day-to-day operations and think strategically about the future of the organization.   “It was an opportunity to just step out of the day to day and really think and talk more about what’s next for us,” she told me.  

The fellowship appears to have sharpened the organization’s focus around what it sees as its unique contribution: operating inside the school day and reaching students who are often excluded from extracurricular STEM opportunities altogether. Reflecting on that realization, Madden said, “we have demonstrated that that’s possible. It’s possible to work inside the school day” while still delivering what many would consider an informal science learning experience.   Rather than presenting Letters to a Pre-Scientist as a standalone solution, she framed it as one piece of a broader ecosystem needed to support STEM participation over time. By the end of the interview, the larger story was not simply about handwritten letters, but about the infrastructure required to sustain meaningful connection at scale, and the growing recognition that science engagement may depend as much on trust, belonging, and relatability as it does on curriculum or content delivery.

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Fanuel Muindi

Fanuel Muindi is a former neuroscientist turned civic science ethnographer. He is a professor of the practice in the Department of Communication Studies within the College of Arts, Media, and Design at Northeastern University, where he leads the Civic Science Media Lab. Dr. Muindi received his Bachelor’s degree in Biology and PhD in Organismal Biology from Morehouse College and Stanford University, respectively. He completed his postdoctoral training at MIT.