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Wright College's STEAM Think Tank is a Student's Dream Team


Example of STEAM being used in a Biology 122 class. Photo used with permission from STEAM Think Tank.

The professors of Wilbur Wright College are student’s dream team. Over the summer, Professor Claire Boeck and Sara Schupack, and seven other faculty, staff, and administration members formed and created the STEAM Think Tank. It’s a small group of nine total members from various different backgrounds (Alicia Anzaldo, Biology Instructor and former CTL Co-Chair, Claire Boeck, Skills Connection Coordinator and Humanities Instructor; Jeremiah Bridges, Director of Academic Support Services; Soma Dey, Physics Instructor; Val Dragos, Math Instructor; Daniel Galemb, Art Instructor, Polly Hoover, Humanities Instructor; Sara Schupack, Director of Developmental Education; Mechelle Rodriguez, Administrative Assistant)

Through the Center of Teaching and Learning, the Think Tank is currently in the primary stages of defining what STEAM is Wilbur Wright College and exploring ways to make the curriculum more integrated, and to build student success. The CTL and STEAM Think Tank are funded by Wilbur Wright College’s Title V Grant.

The acronym STEAM comes from STEM, which is where students’ curriculum is grounded in the four areas of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. However, STEAM is grounded in all four of those areas, plus art; liberal arts and fine arts. STEAM is normally found in K-12 settings, so the involvement of STEAM in Higher Education classrooms is very new, cutting edge, and exciting.

Some students experienced a STEAM experience during Rams Week, which took place in August, the week before this semester started. The STEAM experienced during Rams Week was called Shazam! Ms. Sara Schupack explained, “We explored music and personalized radio station programs like Pandora, as an analogy for genotype and phenotype.” There are infinite ways to integrate art into many different subjects, Professor Boeck gave the examples of what STEAM classes could be such as a dance and anatomy class, as one is learning about dance the parts of the human body involved in the dance moves are learned about as well. The second example she gave was a physics and music class, where the student would learn about different vibrations and the degree and waves of music.

On September 26th, the STEAM Think Tank hosted their first CTL Staff Presentation [on TEAM] to show each other what was learned so far and to bounce ideas off of one another for the future possibilities of inputting STEAM in classrooms. One of the exercises that the Think Tank had the faculty, staff, and administration members participated in, was to draw how they felt in the beginning of the semester and then a second picture of how they will feel around midterms to which then afterwards, they needed to graph it, which expressed the slope in emotion from August to November. There will be second faculty STEAM session later in the fall, however, keep your eyes and ears open to STEAM events and activities!


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