STEM day was held in the plaza, and event that showcased a variety of clubs and organizations, Oct. 18. A collection of tables arced across the quad, decked out with poster boards and machinery. Organized by SWENextXWiSTEM, the STEM day aimed to include the student body in and advertise the many STEM organizations on campus. Chemistry club, Cyber Patriots, Option 16 robotics, Project Binary, 3D Printing Club, iGEM, MedX, and SWENextXWiSTEM all created interactive demos or activities to present.
Option 16 brought a ball-launcher that they had built and gave a presentation about their Integrated Advanced Project, an annual submission for a seasonal event in the second quarter of the school year.
“Building those projects and that ball shooter took a lot of effort,” Julia Smith (12) said. “It was a big group of people, hardware, software engineers, systems: a bunch of different disciplines working on building that robot.”
For Project Binary, Trevor Chen (12) coded a flappy-bird game, along with adaptations of other classic games, like snake, using the coding language Python. Students could play these games for a chance to spin a prize wheel.
“I made the games because of course that’s what CS is often associated with, and often what gets people’s attention,” Chen said. “There’s plenty of art, animation, and design opportunities related to CS, which is something most people don’t know.”
MedX, led by Samiya Mody (12), brought in CPR dummies they borrowed from the ENS department, and taught students how to perform the life-saving task.
The 3D printing club did a demonstration on how to scan objects into a computer modeling program, one of the primary steps in beginning the 3D printing process.
The event was organized mainly by Breanna Thayillam (12) and Jessie Bao (12) — the SWENextXWESTEM co-president and treasurer, respectively. The pair organized a similar event last year, which lasted an entire week, but decided to compress the “STEM week” to only one day.
“We were worried about whether people would be there and would find it interesting,” Thayillam said. “[It] helped this year to have all the clubs go on the same day, so [students] could move from one table to the next and see all the different fields of STEM rather than just focusing on one table, like last year.”
Bao and Thayillam said that a main goal of the event was to educate students on the variety of STEM clubs at school and drum up passion and excitement for STEM outside the classroom.
“We wanted more student involvement and awareness of the different clubs they can participate in to be more engaged in STEM, beyond just taking a class,” Bao said.
Both Bao and Thayillam have been interested in STEM since they were young, a passion that blossomed in their freshman year, when Bao encouraged robotics and computer science-loving Thayillam to join SWENextxWiSTEM.
Thayillam had been participating in robotics, a male-dominated field, since elementary school.
“I was the only girl on my robotics team in middle school for some time,” Thayillam said. “So I think I mostly joined SWE because it was a bigger community of girls who are also interested in STEM and could probably relate to me.”
Thayillam and Bao said that they were happy with the amount of participation from the student body.
“We got some people interested in our club, and I also saw people going around to the other clubs and trying out their activities and demos and signing up,” Thayillam said. “So I think it was a pretty good success.”