The Problem
My wish is to educate middle schoolers about STEM Leadership through educational activities and engaging guest speakers.
My wish is to educate middle schoolers about STEM Leadership through educational activities and engaging guest speakers.
Molly Paul will run a STEM Leadership Camp to empower students in the community to make interdisciplinary connections, connect with other youth who have similar interests, engage in interactive labs and activities, and hear from community leaders about how they use STEM every day. There will be 15-20 middle schoolers in the program. The US is not a world leader in education and in many ways lags behind other countries. Programs such as this summer camp help students realize the amazing things they can do if they study science. Middle school has also proven, again and again in various studies, to be a time of struggling to form one's identity. This is the time when girls' interest in science dwindles. The goal of STEM Leadership Camp is to reach these students and have them connect with science as they are forming their identities and before they jump into advanced high school classes. The summer camp will run the week of June 13th as an all-day program. This is the third year STEM Leadership Camp has ran. Activities students participated in include bridge building, touring behind the scenes at the NC Museum of Natural Sciences, dissecting owl pellets, building and racing mousetrap cars, nature hikes, egg drops, learning about fractals through art, and interactive engineering stations led by FREEDM Systems Center. The funds from the grant will be used to alleviate the cost of the supplies needed to make these activities a reality.