Event Coordinators, Pearl Marinas, Christopher Greaney and Victoria Pascale kicking off the STEM outreach event.
VICTORIA PASCALE/COURTESY
By Mack Olmsted, Features Editor
Manhattan College Mathematics Honor Society, Pi Mu Epsilon (PME) recently hosted a STEM outreach event, dedicated to reaching young students in the local Bronx area from different schools in grades 7-12.
PME members spoke with local teachers who accompanied them, putting together an entertaining and educational field trip for the visiting students. The event consisted of different topics within math, science, engineering and more.
Alumna Katherine Bianca created the concept last year with the idea to have an event where MC invites middle and high school students to learn about math in an entertaining and engaging way. Other STEM programs in the area heard about MC’s outreach program and wanted to participate, providing the ability for visiting students explore the different corners of the STEM fields.
“The whole goal of that [the program] was to immerse students into STEM to kind of see what they’re interested in,” co-coordinator Pearl Marinas said.
The organizations that participated in the event constructed different skill-building activities that were meant to be both educational and fun for the visiting students. These stations had the students build towers out of spaghetti and marshmallows, solve different math problems with a coloring graph, learn simple coding, extract DNA from a strawberry, race recycled water bottle balloon cars and create different color-changing liquid solutions.
“We invited the different organizations to come to the event, and we allowed them to come up with the activities they deemed necessary based on the guidelines we gave them,” co-coordinator Christopher Greaney said. “We wanted them to make it a more fun, engaging activity that seemed interesting to the students. So they [the visiting students] could get students engaged and enjoy the STEM field.”
The event was unique for some MC community members. It’s rare for students in PME to work with middle-school and high-school-aged students as professors usually don’t teach students those ages.
“I think it was really nice for [Manhattan College] students and the kids, especially to see these really young minds flourishing in these activities,” Marinas said. “I think a lot of them enjoyed it and were happy.”
Co-coordinator of the STEM outreach event Victoria Pascale believes the event was a success and hopes the college continues to host events similar to this.
“I think the event turned out well,” Pascale said. “I think the kids had a really good time. I think that they liked it, I believe it definitely increased their interest in STEM and hopefully, they will pursue their majors in STEM in the future. When it was over we asked a couple of students what their favorite activity was, and I believe we got a different answer every time, so across the board, it showed that it wasn’t just one activity that was good, it was kind of a balance.”
At the end of the day, Marinas hopes the students are inspired to do more STEM activities in the future.
“I hope students are inspired to look more into different STEM fields,” Marinas said. “You know, the whole goal of the day was to really immerse the kids in STEM. And so I hope that they feel inspired to really look into it more and figure out what they might be interested in. I hope that they had a great time.”