MANSFIELD — One Richland County high-schooler had an unnerving realization Friday morning.
They might actually like math.
Dawn Kitchen, associate dean at The Ohio State University’s Mansfield campus, said this was just one of the pieces of feedback she heard at the first “Pour Your Heart into STEAM” day on campus.
“In the engineering lab, they’re learning about robots and one of the students said, ‘Wait, this is math? But I like this,’” Kitchen said. “I think a lot of kids think STEAM isn’t in their range or interests, but you can tell from today they just haven’t found what clicks yet.”
Kitchen said there were about 10 high schools in attendance Friday, each with around 12 students in their groups.
Hosted on Valentine’s Day, each science, technology, engineering, art or math project had a theme surrounding love. Twenty OSU Mansfield instructors planned interactive activities related to their discipline for high school students to experience in 40-minute sessions.
Sessions included “Solving a Crime of Passion,” “the Chemistry of Love,” “Making a Scene.” The explored themes like biology, art, physics, engineering and automation.
Students got the opportunity to write, light and direct a play, as well as make candy DNA strands, solve a murder mystery, interact with a camera obscura, and program robots.
“Admission tours are a lot of talking and not as much hands-on,” Kitchen said. “I wanted to just bring them out to have fun today, and if they get a good vibe from it, maybe they’ll want to come back.
“We’ll call this the first annual event, because I’d really like to do it again. The students are so engaged, which is great to see.”
Diane Kanney, director of regional campus recruitment, strategies and initiatives, said “Put Your Heart into STEAM” took about four months of active organization.
“Our goal was to expose them to new subjects or different perspectives on subjects they’re already familiar with,” Kanney said.
“With engineering the catapults for example, they learn soft skills of problem solving and critical thinking that they’d need to be great engineering technology professionals. We’re teaching them about cameras and film, about the good and bad of artificial intelligence.
“And we can’t do events like this without great staff and faculty.”
OSU Mansfield Dean Jason Opal echoed Kanney’s sentiments.
“Our faculty really stepped up to volunteer with this event,” he said. “They have tough classes, but they’re super approachable and excited.”
