Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math, is commonly known as STEM, and for the last 5 years now, Big Spring High school has held a STEM summit for its 9th grade classes. Lisa Black, a business teacher and attendee who went to the Carlisle summit, first proposed the idea to Bill August, principal of Big Spring High School. At that point the STEM summit became a regular event for Big Spring High School. Black said, “This is just a component of educating students for their careers and the future.”

The STEM program is run by an organization called Junior Achievement, a program that is trying to inspire and prepare young people to succeed in a global economy. The goal of the STEM summit is to inspire students to pursue an academic STEM focus in the remainder of their high school courses. The summits include a series of activities within the categories of STEM. This year the summit featured a math competition, a relay, a chemistry experiment, a robotics competition, and more.

The goal of the STEM summit is to spark an interest in careers in a STEM related field. August said, “The goal of the summit is so that the students get an understanding of STEM and that anyone can get into a STEM related field.” Black said, “ STEM is important to show students there are a lot of careers in the STEM field.”  To these staff members, STEM is indeed important enough to miss class. August said, “I think the potential to get them interested in STEM careers is important, and that it will help the rest of their high school classes and potentially aid college plans. The most important thing is to get kids thinking about their careers.”

Black said, “The STEM summit brings meaning to the students classes and that they can make real world connection with what they are doing.”

Among the hundreds of freshman who attended there were multiple freshman whose opinions were fairly similar. Most freshman seemed to like the summit along with all of the activities there. There were many different activities, but out of the freshman interviewed, they all seemed to like the chemistry experiment that was done. McKayla Fanus, Naomi Scott, and Max Sites said fairly similar things about the chemistry experiment. Fanus said “I experienced new things, my activity was the chemistry and it was cool to see how the chemicals reacted.” Scott’s opinion was, “It was fun, chemistry was my favorite activity because I liked watching the experiments happen.” Sites opinion was also like Fanuss’and Scotts’. He said, “ It was fun, chemistry was my favorite activity because I liked watching the reaction.”   

The chemistry experiment was a chemical reaction done with a few chemicals and then placed inside of a glove to form a foam like hand. The freshman seemed to like this experiment because they got to watch a chemical reaction take place and end up seeing the final product. However there was one student who was interviewed who liked the robotics activity; her name was Lily Stotler.  She said “It was interesting because you got to do things you normally don’t do , robotics was my favorite activity because it was fun to watch the robots not work.”