For 30 local children, arts turn STEM into STEAM Week at MTSU

Take STEM — science, technology, engineering and mathematics — and add the arts. It turns STEM into STEAM.

More than 30 Murfreesboro and Rutherford Country youngsters in grades K-7 are experiencing STEAM Week at MTSU.

Sponsored by the Tennessee STEM Education Center, STEAM Week is an art- and dance-focused camp combined with science, technology, engineering and mathematics training, along with the added discipline of visual arts. Students are being exposed to different art forms including mural design, ceramics, clay and oil paints.

Students participate in a dance routine outdoors while attending STEAM Week at MTSU’s Fairview Building July 21. (MTSU photos by Kimi Conro)

Annie Frierson, 10, a sixth-grader at Mitchell-Neilson Elementary School, said the event “was really fun.”

“I learned a lot about art and learned about coding. We played with robots in the technology lab.”

Frierson has attended Camp STEM at MTSU, but this was her first time to be a part of STEAM Week.

Activities included:

Building “doodling robots,” creations that drew for the children.
A visit from artist Jonathan Garner, who brought the science of explosion.
Exploring the science of music with Hobgood Elementary teacher Corynn Moore and Matthew Pyles from Harpeth Hall School in Nashville.
The science of dance, led by instructor Heather Brown, an educational assistant at Mitchell-Neilson.
A visit by Murfreesboro City Police Department’s SWAT team robot.

The group will visit the MTSU Engineering Technology laboratories and learn about solar boats, lunar rovers and more.

Part of July 19’s activities were filmed by Nashville’s WNPT for airing at a later date.

To learn about future Camp STEM and STEAM Weeks at MTSU, visit www.campstem.us, email David Lockett at David.Lockett@mtsu.edu or info@campSTEM.us or call 615-569-5904.

— Randy Weiler (Randy.Weiler@mtsu.edu)

Led by Matthew Pyles, left, a teacher at Nashville’s Harpeth Hall School, students attending STEAM Week at MTSU listen closely to try to hear sounds July 21 in the Fairview Building.