900+ Area Students Explore STEM at SGTC
More than 900 fifth, sixth, seventh and eighth grade students pulled onto the South Georgia Technical College campus recently to spend an entire day learning about robotics and computer coding as part of the college’s largest STEM Day event. STEM is composed of the Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics fields.
The 908 students represented seven different counties – Taylor, Marion, Stewart, Clay, Sumter, Schley and Chattahoochee – and 13 different schools. The event, which was designed to showcase STEM fields using hands-on and up-close activities, was hosted by South Georgia Technical College and sponsored by the Chattahoochee-Flint Regional Educational Service Agency (RESA), Georgia Youth Science and Technology Center (GYSTC) and Eaton lighting.
The goal of the event, which was formally titled the Riveting Robotics and Computer Coding STEM Day, was to teach the students about STEM and spark their interest in related career fields.
To begin the day, Chattahoochee-Flint RESA Director Richard McCorkle and SGTC Grant Coordinator Nancy Fitzgerald welcomed the students to the event and got them excited about the day’s activities. In order to give the students an idea of what they would be learning throughout the day, SGTC’s programmable robot Ace gave a special welcome, highlighted by a reenactment of ‘Star Wars,’ the telling of jokes and a full length ‘Whip/Nae Nae’ dance.
Shortly afterwards, students split into groups and had the opportunity to tour the campus – coding their initials in binary, programing SGTC’s state-of-the-art Nao robots to speak, watching the automotive program’s robotic arm change a tire, controlling their own robots and participating in many other activities along the way.
The day was successful and had more participation than everyone had originally hoped for, Nancy Fitzgerald, SGTC Grant Coordinator and STEM Day coordinator, said.
“[The event] started out to be maybe 500 students is what we thought,” she said. “But when we got the word out, it turned into much more than that. So it took a lot of planning between Heidi Goodin of GYSTC and myself, and we just made it happen.”
The United States Department of Education has identified a need for more training and education in STEM fields – especially in robotics and coding. As a college whose mission is workforce development, SGTC holds STEM-based events to show and encourage future students to explore careers in these and other STEM fields.
As part of that mission, Fitzgerald says she hopes to expand the program next year to reach more students and help them learn about the STEM fields.
“I feel that there is always room for improvement and expansion,” she said. “I don’t think we’ll be able to host more than 1,000 students in the same day, but we would like to increase that number and offer it to more counties and more students.”
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Photos from the day can be viewed HERE and HERE.