STEM Discovery Day to hit campus of MSSU on Friday
JOPLIN, Mo. — On Friday, Missouri Southern State University (MSSU) will host over 215 high school students from the region for STEM Discovery Day, an event designed to explore science, technology, engineering, and mathematics through hands-on activities.
“STEM Discovery Day is a day for students who are 9th to 12th grade and are still trying to feel out whether a STEM-based degree would be something they would want to pursue in a university or college-level setting,” said MSSU Program Director of Environmental Health and Safety Dr. Teresa Bowman. “So, it allows those students to come to Missouri Southern and get to explore our STEM degrees in 40-minute sessions.”
Running from 9:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. on the MSSU campus, the event allows students to participate in up to three of nine available sessions. Each session introduces a STEM field through interactive demonstrations and facility tours.
“We have a variety of opportunities with that,” Dr. Bowman added. “In total, there’s nine different STEM type sessions. The students get to choose from those nine, which would be their three preferred sessions to get to see, which means if they come another year, they can choose to see a different three to get to explore those some as well. … It also lets them see Missouri Southern and see if Missouri Southern is a good fit for them as a choice within a university setting. So they get to be in our variety of our STEM buildings across multiple areas. They get to go into all the different buildings, they get to see the student center, the gym. It allows them to really kind of explore the campus in addition to the STEM degrees that day.”
Highlighted sessions include biochemistry, medical laboratory sciences, biomedical sciences, and forensic chemistry, featuring activities like liquid nitrogen ice cream demonstrations and solving forensic mysteries.
Additional sessions cover microbiology, genetics, conservation biology, environmental health and safety, industrial engineering, automation, food science, and applied mathematics.
MSSU has been hosting this event for four years, and this year has seen the highest number of participating high school students yet. With all of the positive feedback coming from the event, there is a chance it expands in the future.
“I think this is our fourth year of hosting STEM Discovery Day and we’ve seen the numbers kind of trickle up each year as more people learn about it,” Dr. Boman said. “We have schools that will bring groups of 30 students or 40 students at a time that are in STEM-based classes or in a careers-based class that will bring that whole group. … I think our highest number before was maybe around 160 and we have 230 coming this year. I think as more people, more teachers are hearing about it and realizing that we have not just STEM Discovery Day at Missouri Southern, but we have this for different majors and areas as well.”