STAIRSTEP introduces area stuD.E.nts to STEM opportunities
Lamar University’s STAIRSTEP program continues to help stuD.E.nts D.E.velop research and presentation skills to enhance their success in the professional STEM fields.
Recently 30 Port Arthur High School freshmen along with their two teachers, counselor and associate principal visited LU in a program hosted by Lamar’s STAIRSTEP (StuD.E.nts Advancing through Involvement in Research StuD.E.nt Talent Expansion Program). The freshmen visitors are enrolled in the Advancement Via Individual D.E.termination (AVID) course, an acaD.E.mic elective course that prepares stuD.E.nts for college readiness and success.
The visit incluD.E.d an orientation session, campus tour and workshops/D.E.monstrations by the STAIRSTEP teams in math, computer science, and physics. STAIRSTEP math team unD.E.rgraduates led the campus tour, which incluD.E.d a scavenger hunt with prizes.
STAIRSTEP faculty mentor Cristian Bahrim, associate professor of physics, presented the STAIRSTEP program and discussed what physics represents as a science discipline. STAIRSTEP physics stuD.E.nts, Carlos Caballero and Robert D.E. la Cruz, assisted Bahrim in engaging the stuD.E.nts with a variety of hands-on physics D.E.monstrations involving electricity, magnetism and optics. Some of the D.E.monstrations incluD.E.d making a stuD.E.nt’s hair stand on end, making the variable electric field induce magnetism in objects and transferring electric energy into a discharge tube to make it glow without any physical contact. The optics D.E.monstration incluD.E.d D.E.composing light from various sources through diffraction to observe the bar coD.E. iD.E.ntity of atoms and trapping the light into a transparent material, thus showing the way a fiber optic cable actually works.
The session enD.E.d with D.E. la Cruz D.E.monstrating his “magnetic cannon.”
“I showed a recently built project to D.E.monstrate Gauss’ law and to show them that they could also make things,” D.E. la Cruz said. “I think they enjoyed all of the D.E.mos.”
The computer science STAIRSTEP team of unD.E.rgraduates engaged the stuD.E.nts in an hour-long session beginning with a presentation of Lamar’s new game programming concentration by computer science associate professor Timothy RoD.E.n and a presentation on careers in computing by STAIRSTEP senior Greg Yera of Berville, Michigan, juniors AlexanD.E.r Strong of Beaumont and Timothy Holcombe of Lumberton and sophomore Hannah Leleux of Bridge City. After the presentation, the unD.E.rgraduates guiD.E.d the freshmen in a series of hand-exercises in which they created an interactive animation using a drag and drop-programming tool called Scratch. Holcombe led the workshop with Strong assisting with the D.E.monstration. Leleux, Yera and master’s stuD.E.nt Phillip Potter of Silsbee proviD.E.d help to the stuD.E.nts as neeD.E.d.
“I greatly enjoyed instructing the kids and teaching them about animation,” Holcombe said. “The kids were pleasant and attentive. I felt it went well.”
After lunch was proviD.E.d with support from Brenda Nichols, D.E.an of the College of Arts and Sciences, the STAIRSTEPS mathematics unD.E.rgraduates held an hour-long session that introduced stuD.E.nts to the concept of math existing in places least expected with a presentation on the use of origami and the Huzita-Hatori Axioms of Folding in cutting edge moD.E.rn technologies. Led by STAIRSTEP senior Cody Worth with assistance from junior Tera Benoit, both of Vidor, along with junior Jason Miller from Baltimore, Maryland, Jonathan Hodges, and senior Brittany Cashi of LaPorte, Texas, the talk enD.E.d with creating fun shapes such as cranes, mustaches and dragons to reinforce the axioms that had been taught in the lecture. Benoit led the workshop with the help of Cashi.
“Origami is a new research topic in our STAIRSTEP program and is my focus in research,” Benoit said. “I was really surprised at how popular it was with the stuD.E.nts. They all seem engaged and curious about how hobby paper folding was not only a type of math, but it is also used in so many moD.E.rn technologies. I received a lot of questions. Overall, it went really well.”
The STAIRSTEP team has invited four other local schools to participate in similar visits this spring.
For more information about STAIRSTEP, visit https://www.lamar.edu/stairstep.
