By Gabrielle Martin, Staff Reporter.
Making the Delta difference has been a goal of Delta College for quite some time and the school is about to take that to the next level. Delta College recently received a $4 million grant from the Herbert H. and Grace A. Dow Foundation to build the STEM Explorer. The STEM Explorer will be a 38-foot vehicle that will be equipped with top-notch technology, including a 3-D printer, which will travel to local middle and high schools to help engage students in STEM (Science Technology Engineering Math).
“The major idea,” says Scott Schultz, chair of the Science Division at Delta, “is that it’s an opportunity for our faculty to work alongside our K-12 counterparts to provide a robust curriculum that will expose students to the interdisciplinary nature of STEM.”
At the middle school level, the STEM Explorer will serve as a traveling science museum. It has the added benefit of enabling students to not miss other classes which they would normally have to do on a routine field trip. High school students will be given a problem that challenges them to create a new device in order to solve the problem. At the end of the school year, a conference will be held in which the students present their devices that provide a solution.
Delta was awarded the grant from the Herbert H. and Grace A. Dow Foundation by having the best proposal out of several universities on how they could move STEM forward. Schultz thinks one of the reasons Delta was awarded the grant is because they took a broader definition of STEM, trying to include as many fields and degrees as possible that would be able to help create the STEM Explorer.
Students in many fields, including Electronic Media Broadcasting, various health fields, and those in STEM will assist in designing the STEM Explorer. Delta students in science, technology, engineering, and math fields will have the opportunity to go out with the STEM Explorer and assist high school students in designing their devices.
“We are excited about [this] because we think that K-12 students will get excited about STEM and desire to pursue college degrees – and yes, some of those students will come to Delta – and that will have a positive impact on our local economy,” says Schultz. He added that 34 out of 50 careers in Michigan where we will need future employees are in STEM and that it is projected Michigan will need to fill 274,000 jobs in STEM fields by 2018.
The STEM Explorer will also hopefully help to equal out the male-to-female ratio in STEM careers. According to the Huffington Post, less than 25 percent of jobs in STEM are held by women. By getting students, both boys and girls, engaged in STEM from a younger age, both genders may feel that they can succeed in the field.
The STEM Explorer is still being drafted; once fully designed, it will take six months to build. Delta is striving to make a difference in the lives of many young children, current and future students, and the economy with this futuristic way of engaging students in real world problems.