Southeast Iowa STEM and Collins Aerospace hosted a STEM Community Day on Thursday, July 18. The free, public event aimed to share STEM concepts with students and community members through workshops, tours and hands-on activities to inspire and engage Iowa youth.
This was the second year Southeast Iowa STEM and Collins Aerospace have teamed up for this event, which has grown nearly two-fold. Over 60 community partners hosted tables where kids of all ages engaged with interactive science, engineering, technology and mathematics (STEM) career-linked learning and activities.
View photos from Community STEM Day on Flickr
“(There are) so many areas STEM touches,” said Matt Stier, southeast regional STEM manager. “It’s important for them to see that.”
Events like this allow the Governor’s STEM Advisory Council at the Iowa Department of Education and its six STEM regions to reach students all across the state, exposing them to various STEM careers and the vast array of opportunities that STEM can offer.
At the event’s street fair, kids could be seen engineering with toothpicks and gummy candies, building with legos, learning about circuits and even programming robots and drones. There was also a rock band to show just how wide the STEM umbrella reaches.
Stier recalled the remarks of one youth attendee, “I didn’t think about music as STEM.”
He went on to say that this was the goal of the event – to expose students to the opportunities and get them thinking, “Hey, I could see myself doing this career.”
Collins Aerospace and its army of volunteers also hosted various workshops – from assembling prosthetic hands that get donated across the world to learning to solder and even connecting circuits to make a light-up greeting card.
Collins Aerospace also provided the unique opportunity for registered attendees to tour select lab facilities on their campus, such as their flight deck.
“It’s a passion for STEM and sharing that with our community members,” Stier said. “It’s also an opportunity to give back to the community.”