In the Fall 2024 – Spring 2025 academic year (Sep-Mar), the Center for STEM Education hosted a total of 15 field trips, with a total of ~725 students in grades 3-8. Over 75 NEU students and six student groups assisted us with field trips this year.
Our field trips prioritize Boston Public School (BPS) schools, but we try to take a few non-BPS schools each year. This year, of our 15 field trips, there were two of these field trips:
October 11th, 2024: 52 students in grades 6-8 from the Al-Hamra Academy
This was our first field trip from Al-Hamra Academy and it went great! Al-Hamra Academy is located all the way out in Shrewsbury – this is our second central MA school since the Longsjo Middle School came in 2019. This field trip was all about Civil and Environmental Engineering – students designed Hurricane-Proof Towers (see images above) and learned about pollution through our Who Polluted and Water Filters activities. In addition, this trip was special because the whole day was led not by myself (Nick), who usually leads these field trips, but by Jamie and Amanda (in picture above), our second year volunteers – who, with four other volunteers, did a fantastic job leading this day!
March 21, 2025: 45 students in grade 5 from West Somerville Neighborhood School
This field trip also was all about Civil and Environmental Engineering (and a bit of city planning), but rather than revolving around pollution, this one was about Natural Disasters and Climate Change (activity link). Students started the day learning about the engineering design process (Ask, Imagine, Plan, Create, Improve) by designing, building, and improvising paper towers: first round with just a single piece of printer paper, and a second round with two pieces of cardstock, scissors, and six inches of duct tape. Seen at right here is the tallest tower designed in the class (and the tallest I’ve seen in awhile).
After paper towers – wherein we practiced the important engineering skills: teamwork, perseverance, and creativity, we moved on to natural disasters, where we came up with disaster plans and emergency kits for hurricanes and earthquakes (we did this as two large groups, as opposed to six smaller groups, and it still worked well – so may do these larger groups again in the future). Finally we wrapped up with our portable levees activity. Thank you to Northeastern’s chapter of BESS, the Black Engineering Student Society, who provided volunteers for this day and hosted a student panel during lunch!
