Family-friendly STEM Day set for July 18

This story first appeared in STEM in Iowa 2024, an annual special section distributed in The Gazette that provides an in-depth look at how this educational pathway is having an impact in the classroom as well as in future workforce pipelines.

Get ready to get your kids engaged in STEM. The second annual Southeast Iowa Community STEM Day is set for July 18 from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. in the parking lot in the Collins Aerospace facility at 400 Collins Road NE in Cedar Rapids.

This event features STEM activities from community partners (including local businesses, community groups and nonprofit organizations); science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) workshops; tours of labs at Collins Aerospace; musical entertainment by School of Rock and more. You could imagine it’s like a farmer’s market, but full of K-12 focused STEM activities instead.

“It’s a street festival but instead of vendors, we have STEM activities that are hosted by different community partners, like the weather team from KCRG, groups from the University of Iowa and Mount Mercy University, and Boy Scout groups and library programs,” said Matt Stier, Ph.D., the Southeast Iowa Regional STEM manager at the Kirkwood Regional Center at the University of Iowa. “Each group has put together different activities geared towards K-12 students, and people can pop into the booth to talk with them and do the activity that demonstrates a STEM concept.

Southeast Iowa Regional STEM helped organize the event in partnership with leaders from Collins Aerospace.

“This was really a bottom-up event, in that Collins Aerospace employees were really interested in getting this off the ground,” Stier said. “They started the initial planning to bring some people out to their site and do some tours. Southeast Iowa STEM was brought in because we have experience hosting these STEM fairs. It fits perfectly with our mission to promote STEM education and STEM careers so it made this a really perfect partnership.”

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The event will also include a variety of food trucks — at least a dozen — so attendees can fuel up for the day of fun.

The impact of the event is important, Stier said.

“First and foremost, we are engaging the community in STEM opportunities and careers. They get to see not just the classic engineering aspects of it, but they see how STEM connects to a lot of other fields. The Boy Scouts have a LEGO car ramp where you can test out different designs and rebuild to see if you can make your car go faster. Local banks talk about math and accounting. This event really brings together a community of people and it doesn’t happen without community support.”

Stier noted there are well over 40 groups participating in STEM Day hosting a booth.

“It’s exciting that we all work together to help people see the big picture of how STEM fits into our day to day lives and that there are a lot of interesting careers and opportunities to pursue,” he said.

Workshops are also offered throughout the day to allow for a deeper dive into certain topics. There’s an opportunity to make a light up greeting card. There’s drone programming. One workshop allows students to look at operating a prosthetic hand. There’s also soldering workshops and a workshop dedicated to building a bike. These give students hands-on opportunities to grow their interest in STEM even more, Stier said.

Exclusive tours of some of the Collins Aerospace Labs are also available. Tours of the Sim Lap and Common Test Systems Architecture Lap are available, as are tours of the Concept Flight Lab Deck and the F-35 Helmet Mounted Display System.

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Last year’s event drew more than 1,300 participants. Stier and his co-planners are hoping more than 2,000 people will attend this time around.

“It’s a big STEM extravaganza,” Stier said. “Last year, we put it out there kind of not knowing what we might get for engagement, and it certainly exceeded our expectations. So shortly thereafter, we started planning and thinking about this year because there's definitely a lot of excitement.”

This event is free and open to the public and exhibitors. Some of the workshops and tours do require advanced registration as there are limited spots for participation. You can find out more information and register by visiting se.iowastem.org/stem-festivals.