Project Description
On Thursday, November 8th, COA celebrated National STEM Day with our 2nd Annual STEM Expo held at our Goldin Center (2320 W. Burleigh Street). National STEM Day encourages youth around the country to explore Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math. 100 youth participated in fun STEM activities at COA’s two-hour STEM Expo. Children from COA’s Burke Early Education Center, and preteens and teens from COA’s Riverwest Center and Goldin Center practiced exciting STEM skills at 15 hands-on exploration stations.
Children dug-in to cool science experiments at each station. For example, they learned about meteorology using shaving cream and food coloring. Another station allowed youth to experiment with engineering through building with Legos. Youth also beaded necklaces to learn coding skills, dug through delicious cookies for “chocolate chip” fossils to learn about paleontology, and used balloons to learn about static electricity.
In addition to the youth in attendance at COA’s STEM Expo, COA welcomed a host of volunteers, including additional teens from the Goldin Center and University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee service learners. These awesome volunteers helped to lead activity stations. 88Nine Milwaukee and Fox 6 News also joined in on the fun!
“The youth were intrigued with every station that they visited and seemed to really enjoy all of the interactive activities we had.”
COA’s STEM Coordinator Lina Nguyen planned the event and was proud of the turn-out. She said: “The youth were intrigued with every station that they visited and seemed to really enjoy all of the interactive activities we had. Some kids even ended up crying because their parents picked them up early and they didn’t get to finish all of the stations!”
COA’s 2nd Annual STEM Expo is part of COA’s Kohl’s Explore Your Future STEM program. Launched in 2017, this program has already provided high-quality scientific education and career exploration opportunities to over 1,500 youth. COA is grateful for Kohl’s, our volunteers, our youth development staff, and our incredible STEM Coordinator for making this year’s STEM Expo another success!