A week-long, statewide campaign to encourage STEM education stopped by in Springfield, Massachusetts Wednesday, putting hundreds of students in direct contact with science, technology, engineering and math.
Lieutenant Governor Kim Driscoll, State Secretary of Education Patrick Tutwiler, and others joined hundreds of students at the Basketball Hall of Fame for the 2nd annual “MassMakes Innovation Challenge.”
Organized by the Center for Advanced Manufacturing at MassTech, the event comes during STEM week.
Adam Couturier, Manufacturing Education Director for the CAM, says the campaign aims to inspire students to pursue a career in STEM.
“We're trying to expose students to what's possible, and I don't know what is going to spark a student's interest or creativity, and what we want to happen is for students to be exposed to things that creates an ‘aha moment,’” he said. “And so, hopefully events like this - somebody is going to be a robotics engineer or a microelectronics fab technician or whatever. Our goal is really to show what's possible.”
Lt. Governor Driscoll says with a constantly changing tech landscape and recent advancements in artificial intelligence, investing in early STEM education now only benefits the state.
“I think the reality is, there are jobs ten years from now that none of us could even describe right now as we think about AI and growing technology - most of which is happening here in Massachusetts,” the lieutenant governor told reporters. “Having our students prepared for whatever comes next, being able to participate in our strong innovation and knowledge-based economy, is really what STEM week’s all about.”
Students from a dozen schools cycled through multiple demonstrations – from tables with robotic arms and laptops controlling them to a concourse with RC cars, challenging students with learning command functions to drive the cars from point A to point B.
Getting the hang of things was Central High School senior, Javion Monserrate.
“The controls are all messed up, but I got the hang of it - I know the controls, but the response is late,” the 18-year-old told WAMC.
Monserrate says he has his mind set on a career with the Springfield Water and Sewer Commission after a recent internship.
With plans to study engineering at Springfield Technical Community College, he says getting familiar with robotics wouldn’t hurt.
“I want to get into Springfield Water and Sewer as a skilled laborer,” he explained. “I did the internship with them over the summer, as a junior last year, and I found my career there… and I think they use robots over there for many things.”
Running the robotics station was True Robotics Inc., a “research-focused EdTech startup based in Worcester,” according to its website.
Its president, Anthony Galgano, says his company specializes in making STEM education more accessible, going into schools and providing robot kits and curriculums that include robotics and programming.
“The more exposure you can give students to just seeing what’s out there, the more there’s a chance for them to decide if STEM could be for them,” he said. “Or, what I always like to say is the flip side - maybe they can identify STEM as not something they want to go into, and they’ll become a doctor or some other field, a lawyer or something like that. It’s very important to me personally, to give every kid the opportunity to make that decision.”
Also at the event: Mao Lun Weng, an Associate Professor at Westfield State University, is a member of the Pioneer Valley STEM Network. The organization supports students and teachers – providing up to $1,000 for educators or community leaders with an idea for a STEM project.
“We just launched the mini-grant for K-12 teachers to apply [for] … for their classroom project or teaching, whatever they feel like, [to] increase the awareness of STEM in their classroom.”
According to the state’s Acting Commissioner of Elementary and Secondary Education Russell Johnston, spreading that awareness can’t start soon enough.
“[It’s] uniquely important and vitally important that we start as early as possible, this can't wait until the final years of high school, this has to be something that we work on all throughout the students’ learning experiences, to help them prepare for their choices related to college and career,” Johnston said. “I think that's really what today is helping to promote … helping students see where their destiny lies and what they can do to achieve that goal and get there in their lives.”
