STEM Science Fair

This past Saturday, Frank, Kristen, Lucy and myself volunteered at the Boston Public Schools Science Fair/College Awareness day at Northeastern. The fair, which was held in the Cabot Center, was organized by The Center for Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math Education, more commonly referred to as STEM. STEM has a strong connection to Sport in Society due to the fact that their office is literally right next to ours. STEM is a very interesting organization, as it serves as the connecting link between the science, technology, engineering, and math departments at Northeastern. These are all growing fields, making STEM a very important part of Northeastern's future.

The fair itself consisted of kids in grades 6-12, with each one being judged on an experiment that they had conducted. It has been many years since I have participated or even attended a science fair, so it was quite an experience seeing all of the cool projects. Particularly rewarding for myself was running into one of the Junior Coach Leaders that I had worked extensively with at the Playworks event from the week before, and getting to see her project. At this point you are probably wondering what any of this has to do with Sport in Society. Our role at the fair was to help supervise the participants that had already been judged. Since these were primarily middle schoolers chalk-full of energy, we provided them an outlet to release it. In the racquetball courts at Cabot we hosted a variety of games, including soccer, dodge-ball, double-dutch, and four-square. It is amazing how much fun volunteering can be! Overall, it was a very fulfilling experience and I for one look forward to potentially working with STEM in the future.

For more information on STEM, visit their website at http://www.stem.neu.edu/