Music combined with Science, Technology, Engineering and Math at Collinsville High School for a one-day Create Music STEM Camp on January 30, 2018.
The CHS Science and Fine Arts Departments collaborated to provide an opportunity for 40 students to participate in a one-day Create Music STEM Camp that immersed students in a hands-on learning experience.
The STEM Camp was presented by the PEERS Foundation through a grant from the Maritz Arts and Education Fund for Teachers which is administered by the Arts and Education Council – St. Louis.
Students were freshmen and sophomores selected to promote under-represented groups in the STEM fields: girls, minorities, low-income families and/or first generation college bound.
CHS music teacher Lisa Cleveland and science department chair Tom Withee worked together to secure funding to bring the PEERS Foundation camp to CHS.
“I am really excited about this opportunity for our students,” said Withee. “There are so many amazing career options for them and I just hope that this experience will open them up to the possibilities. Working with the Fine Arts department has really helped strengthen our school environment. We’re all trying to help our students find their passion and pursue it.”
The PEERS Foundation camp capitalizes on a student’s interest in music to work in lessons on design, engineering and coding.
The STEM Camp had five activities:
1) A digital design lab where students used drafting software to design a musical instrument;
2) Prototyping demo where the students’ designs were prototyped using 3D printing;
3) Developing a Music App;
4) Building a synthesizer using Little Bits Snap Circuits;
5) Writing a song using Scratch software from MIT.
As a result of the camp, Mrs. Cleveland had several ideas to incorporate new technology into her music classes. She is also pleased with the positive outcome of cooperation across departments at CHS and hopes this will generate many other collaborative efforts.
Mr. Withee would like to see this exposure to STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art and Math) result in more students taking upper level science electives. “That’s way we focused on underclassmen,” he said, “We want to see more kids taking vocational and science in the future.”
Read an Arts and Education Council blog post about the Create Music STEM Camp.
View the KMOV Channel 4 News story about the Create Music STEM Camp.