Three Friends of STEM meetings were organized during the 2013-2014 academic year with attendance from
parents in all sections of the schools. Highlights included
a keynote presentation by Puragra (Raja) Guhathakurta,
professor of Astronomy and Astrophysics at UC Santa
Cruz and Head of the summer Science Internship
Program, an intervention from Marcus Wojtkowiak, the
Director of the Randall Science Museum Middle School
Science Fair (a special thank you to senior Marc Robert
Wong for making these connections) and a discussion panel on design thinking and the creative process
including Nathan Shedroff and Natalie Blavin-Kakone
from the California College of the Arts, Lucinda Lee Katz
and Matt Levinson from Marin Country Day School, and
Barbara Abecassis and Joel Cohen from International
High School.
The first event of the 2014-2015 academic year was
dedicated to Design Technology, with presentations
from our faculty and from Giles Thompson, teacher at
Lick-Wilmerding High School. The second event was
centered on a Lower School Science Night, and showcased the new programs that had been started this year
with our younger students. The final event took place on
May 7, and focused on adding the arts in STEM to make
it STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, Mathematics).
Friends of STEM
science, technology, engineering, mathematics and the design arts
Parent Support Enhances STEM in the High School
JOEL COHEN, HIGH SCHOOL PRINCIPAL
One of the school’s priorities, set three years ago, was the enhancement of our STEM programs. STEM is an acronym for Science, Technology, Engineering and Math and implies taking science out of the classroom to create interdisciplinary opportunities for our students to experiment with motivating
and stimulating project-based experiments. A number of
initiatives were subsequently launched, including an upper school science club aiming at preparing students for
science fair competitions, a middle school robotics club
(French American Creates), opportunities for high school
students to learn coding, a new science space in the
lower school, design and tinkering programs, and more.
The response from our parent community was overwhelmingly positive, and we were thrilled to receive
so many offers of help from families who wanted to
contribute to the enhancement of our programs. So we
launched a parent support group in Spring 2013 to serve
as a platform to share our initiatives with the community,
to brainstorm new ideas, and to benefit from the expertise and connections many of our parents have in the areas of STEM, High Tech, Design and Innovation. Friends
of STEM was born and the planning of events started
with the help of Robert Evans, parent of two French
American students, who offered to lead the group.
