For immediate use: Tuesday, March 18
Registration has begun for the first-ever STEMville Science Symposium on April 5 at Morehead Planetarium and Science Center at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
The STEMville Science Symposium will begin at 8:30 a.m. with a keynote address and continue with hands-on activities that include programming robots, constructing solar cells, extracting DNA from strawberries, building catapults, making recycled artwork and more. The symposium concludes at 12:30 p.m. More than 100 students in grades 4-7 will participate in the Saturday event.
Details and online registration are available through this link: http://bit.ly/STEMsymposium.
Registration is open through March 28. The $20 registration fee includes conference backpack, T-shirt, name badge, notebook, breakfast and snacks. Some scholarships are available for students who qualify.
“We started STEMville to give all children a quality yet fun science experience, especially if they might not have much exposure to science outside of school,” explained Crystal Adams, Morehead’s director of external programs. “By participating in STEMville, they’re actually performing science activities themselves, and they’re meeting young scientists, researchers, informal science educators and high school students who can serve as role models.”
The STEMville concept, created by Morehead’s external programs staff, is a series of community science programs that serve underrepresented groups in STEM education — science, technology, engineering and mathematics (focusing on women, Latinos, African-Americans and students in rural and urban communities of lower socioeconomic status). In the past year, Morehead presented STEMville Saturday of Science events and afterschool programs across North Carolina — in Clay, Durham, Guilford, Halifax, Jones, Greene, Lenoir, Polk and Wake counties.
STEMville Science Symposium is a joint effort and collaboration with the Carolina Latina/o Collaborative (part of the UNC Office of Diversity and Multicultural Affairs) and the North Carolina State University College of Sciences Office of Diversity and Student Services.
Morehead Planetarium and Science Center contact: Crystal Adams, (919) 843-8496, cadams@unc.edu
News Services contact: Susan Hudson, (919) 962-8415, susan_hudson@unc.edu