STEM ‘surrounds all of us’

Young students and children who may not have a lot of exposure to science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) programs are getting to learn up close through hands-on activities from local students.

Through efforts by Louise Carroll, a Cranbury School graduate and current Lawrenceville School student, and the STEM Outreach Club she founded at the Lawrenceville School, young children are able to learn more about science and technology with a variety of hands-on STEM activities.

“I wanted to really reach out to kids who were younger. STEM is fundamentally becoming more and more important in society,” she said.

“Having these skills at a younger age will set them up for a brighter future. I knew that I wanted to pursue this as my project, but also expand it a little more to kids not in my direct contact and to kids in central New Jersey.”

Carroll enjoys managing the large-scale project that involves educating others, especially when the project involves something she is passionate about – STEM.

The idea to have hands-on STEM activities for young children and students came about as she thought of a project to do for her Girl Scout Gold Award at the end of spring and pulled from her previous experience when she brought back the Cranbury School’s STEAM (science, technology, engineering, arts and math) Fair.

“I wanted to make it a little bit larger because at The Lawrenceville School, we have so many resources and different machinery and technology, and plenty of opportunity to be able to do hands-on STEM activities on campus,” Carroll said.

They started by getting the school’s list of after school programs that they could offer their programs to.

Over the summer with three of her closest friends, who also supported the club and idea, they wrote curriculum documents outlining activities and also budgeting.

“The school offers us $200 for our resources so we wanted to be able to set up a system after we eventually graduate where we can leave behind documentation for people to take it over and be able to run it easily keeping it as a sustainable project,” she added.

Elizabeth Ferguson, Lawrenceville School’s director of the Community Service program, over the summer helped them figure out how to schedule the events and how to manage the activity event days.

They had their first event on Oct. 6 and had more than 40 high schoolers help out from the Lawrenceville School who were not a part of the STEM Outreach Club.

“That was the exciting part to see everything come together. We had 25 visiting students I believe that day,” Carroll said. “On Oct. 25, was the big Halloween party where there were 100 to 150 kids.”

Hands-on activities that took place included a Halloween themed potion identification activity, which involved pH (potential of hydrogen) testing of different substances such as lemon juice, water, apple juice, and baking soda in water.

“Making these things appear very simple, fun, and exciting, but also hinting at something a little bit more meaningful with the background of STEM,” Carroll explained of the activities.

“We did a witches house construction project meant to simulate how we need to start building houses stronger because hurricanes are becoming more prominent due to climate change. We had a hair dryer that we used to simulate different storms.”

There was portal making, which was having a bunch of skittles or M&M’s lined up in a circle then pouring water on them.

“That would simulate the property of diffusion, which is present in molecular biology,” Carroll said. “It would explain why the colors don’t necessarily mix, because the sugar concentrations aren’t the same, and because of that the molecules can’t fuse.”

Carroll noted the fun and exciting activities are meant to pique the young students’ interest.

Each activity summarized the scientific properties or fundamental principal they were trying to explain through the engineering project.

“It is more about piquing interest and giving them extra information to allow them to take away from it what they want to take away from it,” Carroll said.

The events occur at the school because it is easier for the project to have all of the materials needed and less of a possibility of things or items being destroyed.

“October was double doozy,” Carroll said, noting the events were smaller in terms of what they wanted to do. “Jan. 31 is our next event and is going to be our own standalone event, where it is going to be sole community service commitments that day.”

Carroll and the club hope to organize 10 to 15 booth leaders with more than 50 high schoolers and a couple adults to act as chaperones for the young students.

“All of that totals up to 120 people and that is happening in January,” she added.

“We are going to having catapults and basic physics, Lego robotics and I was going to hold it in the Gruss Center for Art and Design (GCAD), which is the group center for art and design. They have all of the heavy machinery – laser cutters and all these other things. Safely we are going to be doing tours of that.”

Carroll explained that STEM is often seen at times as something that is expensive and a lot of high-tech things such as coding.

“So, I try to make a lot of these activities as basic as possible while also being able to expose them to the higher technology piece of STEM,” she explained.

“For example, with the pH testing project, not every kid would have a pH tester at home. But I’m using materials such as mason jars, and apple juice, and lemon juice. They would have those things laying around.”

The portal making activity was a small packet of skittles and water.

“STEM is not exclusive to those who have the resources to be able to do it,” Carroll emphasized.

“It surrounds all of us and is possible for everyone to get involved if they want to.”