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The Field House at the Pennsylvania College of Technology was buzzing throughout the day Thursday as students from area schools were able to see science, technology, engineering and math at work as part of the annual Science Festival held by the college.
It was the fifth year for the daytime program, which brings in about 1,500 fifth-grade students from throughout Lycoming and surrounding counties to participate in activities and to see the vendor showcase.
The evening event, which is in its eighth year, consisted of local businesses and organizations, along with area school and college affiliated groups, which offered activities to area elementary school students and their families.
"It's all STEM activities that are business and industries, Lycoming College and Penn College programs have demonstrations of activities within their career fields and in the business career fields of how STEM relates to what they do, to get kids excited about science and math," said Tanya Berfield, assistant director of College Transitions and First Year Initiatives, who was in charge of the event.
Fifth graders were brought in earlier in the day because there is a state-wide initiative, a career and counseling guidance plan with a benchmark in fifth grade that has a career exploration component.
"By us offering this to fifth graders they get to mark that as an activity they did and we get to showcase Penn College and Lycoming College and STEM activities," Berfield said. She added that the fifth graders are always "super excited" about participating.
Walking through the Field House, almost 50 vendors showcasing their areas of expertise offer young students the opportunity to participate in hands-on activities.
Sixth-grader Gabriel Matz, who is interested in engineering, was helping demonstrate Bernouilli's Principle using a leaf blower and a beach ball.
"When the leaf blower is on, it's hitting the beach ball making it go up, but gravity is also pulling it back down to earth," he said. "When that happens, both gravity and the air are balancing it out so that it stays in one place."
"Sixth, seventh and eighth grade STEM class is like an engineering class for middle school," said Bill Lundy, a teacher at St. John Newman. "You can tell by Gabe's response they pay attention and they love it."
He noted that he had seen statistics from the state Department of Labor which suggested that by the time his students graduate from college, they will be working in jobs that don't even exist right now.
"We're preparing them for jobs that don't exist to use technology that has yet to be invented, to solve problems that they don't even know are problems, so we're really teaching these kids how to think," Lundy said.
Fellow teacher, Kevin Nickolaus, agreed. He said that a lot of the students graduating from St. John Neumann are going into STEM-related fields, particularly the medical field and engineering.
At the PlastiVan program display sponsored by the Society of Plastics Engineers, the young scientists could learn about plastics and polymers by creating.
"We teach them that the molecules of plastics are called polymers and they're kind of like long spaghetti strand molecules. They're very flexible and that's why plastics are moldable and shapeable. And then we show them how to make a plastic which is slime," said Elizabeth Egan, a PlastiVan educator who had traveled here from Michigan to participate in the event.
She noted that once the students heard about the slime they were eager to try their hand at making it.
"We try to teach them a little about the chemistry of it," she added.
Penn College students, Abbigail Kerstetter and Paul Glover, both plastics and polymer engineering technology students at the school, were assisting Egan with the activities.
Glover said he became interested in the field at his high school which offered a lot of STEM activities.
"What brought me here (Penn College), were the labs and the amount of hands-on work you can do," he said.
Kerstetter echoed that.
"I knew when I was younger I wanted to do something in engineering because I liked the hands-on things," she said. "I went to a vocational school my senior year and that got me into the engineering mindset. I started touring schools and I knew a technology school would be very hands-on, so I looked here. It was amazing."
Jared Hileman, a junior at Penn College in construction management, was demonstrating to students that stopped by his table the need to have soil compaction in order to have a stable foundation for construction.
Next to that table were students from the college's electrical program showing how electromagnetic switches and solar panels work.
Everywhere there were young future scientists exploring various aspects of the STEM programs.
"Our focus is really to get kids to learn how to solve problems," Nickolaus said. "That's what STEM really is, using science and technology to solve problems."