Alamance-Burlington School System high school students gathered on Elon University’s campus April 18 for Elon’s annual STEM Saturday. Elon senior and co-lead of STEM Saturday Sophia Wall said the program works directly with ABSS to give students hands-on experience in STEM through labs.
“We work really hard with the Alamance County districts to try to bring high school students in to just expose them to things in the STEM fields that they may not have access to,” Wall said.
Since the program works directly with ABSS, Wall said the planning process starts early.
Walls said they start with assembling a leadership team of the best students through all of the different STEM departments in order to put this event together so they have roles for transportation and finance.
Elon sophomore and co-lead of STEM Saturday Trudie Arling said she hopes the hands-on experiences and watching the presentations of science engineering technology or math topics offered during STEM Saturday can get students excited about pursuing a career in STEM.
“We hope to inspire them to pursue a STEM degree,” Arling said. “But also to get them connected with other people who are really passionate about science and who have decided to pursue it in college so they can see their future careers potentially.”
Arling said that students were able to attend labs, including an anatomy lab, as part of the program event.
“Elon is one of the only undergraduate human donor labs in the country,” Arling said. “So it's a really unique opportunity for students here at Elon, but it's also a really unique opportunity for the high school students who are here. They get to go into the lab and see everything that's there. We don't have any of the actual human donors out, but they get to see some of the different things that they have there. I know today they're looking at brains and bones and hearts, which is really cool.”
Wall said events like this are a great way to connect with prospective students while also giving back.
“I think it's really important to just give back to the community,” Wall said. “We're able to show them engineering and really gauge their interest in maybe not only like Elon as a potential school that they could go to for college, but just going into STEM fields, which are super important.”