On a beautiful Saturday on April 21st, STEM Trek, a NC Science Festival event, offered young people and their families opportunities to engage in hands-on activities to learn more about STEM skills and STEM Careers. Integrating science, technology, engineering and math to solve problems everyday leads to innovation for our region.

In partnership with STEM West, the Catawba Science Center, North Carolina Center of Engineering Technologies, and KLINGSPOR organized and implemented this experience. Community organizations such as Duke Energy, Corning, NC Forestry, Burke County Schools, Shurtape, UNC Morehead Planetarium, NC Bionetwork of Community colleges, Lenoir Rhyne University, Foothills Community workshop, and KLINGSPOR eagerly interacted with young people and families to show how STEM is part of our everyday lives and work.

If you wanted to engineer the tallest structure out of pool noodles, help to save super heroes through blood typing, understand how to properly excavate historical artifacts, compare speeds of disks with friction variables, paint with a spherical robot, see how erosion effects our environment, build a better floating boat, STEM Trek is where it happened!

The 2018 event was a great success, but stay tuned for an expanded program in 2019. Register on the website to stay informed and get involved.

Corning provided several young female engineers to provide activity converting light into sound/music.

Bionetwork of NC Community Colleges (Asheville Office) engaged students in multiple STEM activities.

Klingspor—provided financial support for marketing event!

Burke County STEAM Academy provided several activities using Spheros!