STEAM Town USA
“...when asked what they would be doing in the first class, they enthusiastically said that they would be learning about science!” -Melissa K. Cassel
“For me, sharing my love for science and engineering with the girls is perhaps one of the most rewarding aspects of my job and my life.” -Melissa K. Cassel, Facilities Planner at ExxonMobil and STEAM Town USA volunteer.
This program is an after-school program that seeks to increase exposure of third grade girls to STEAM concepts, improve grades and graduation rates, and encourage girls to pursue STEAM careers. The program serves Conroe, Houston, Goose Creek and Spring Branch school districts. We have graduated over 1,500 girls from the program since its inception.
Ifell in love with the STEAM Town USA program back in 2016. It had been less than a year since I started my full-time job with ExxonMobil, and I was attending a women’s lunch for the United Way, which featured guest speaker, Suzan Deison, CEO, President, and Founder of the Greater Houston Women’s Chamber of Commerce.
She discussed many topics, but when she discussed a STEM and Arts after-school outreach program for third grade girls in 10 schools in HISD, Conroe and Spring, whose only constraint to growth was volunteers, I knew I had found my calling to bring STEAM Town USA to the community surrounding my workplace in Baytown.
I remember our first session at Travis Elementary our first year – the girls seemed a little skeptical of the program asking questions like why they had to stay after school and do more work when they could be at home playing, and then we got to the first activity where they are asked to do long division to estimate the number of homes needed in a town with a given population.
We received a lot of random guesses and “I don’t know’s” and even some blank stares. The teacher in the classroom said, “They don’t learn long division in the third grade.” But just because they don’t does not mean they can’t. Within 10 minutes or so, we simplified the problem so that the girls could solve it and apply it to the other problems. In future after-school sessions, the girls applied what they had learned and determined the cost of making puppy shampoo and at what price it should be sold, from the price and quantity of its ingredients and the value of their labor.
In a later unit on renewable and nonrenewable resources, the girls determined how many hours they would have to work to pay for gasoline to travel a certain distance with cars of different MPG ratings (Lamborghinis and Ford F-150s were popular initial selections until they realized they could work fewer hours to pay for gas if they drove a sedan).
All these problems are problems they wouldn’t learn how to solve in third grade if it weren’t for STEAM Town USA. By the end of the year, all girls had developed a love for the program and therefore a love for STEAM education.
The project-based learning opportunities and community application drove the girls to see how careers in STEM can help them make an impact on their community.
At the end of the year, I had a guidance counselor send me an email. She wrote that one of the girls had just moved to the school that year and spoke little English. Because of the mentorship of our volunteers and the camaraderie of a small group of 11 other third grade girls in the STEAM Town program, the guidance counselor told me that she had “blossomed” during the school year.
I remembered working with that student. She was quiet at first, but perhaps one of the best and quickest in the class when it came to solving the math problems, and at the end of the year, she was one of the students who presented on STEAM Town USA at graduation. Overall, we have seen all the girls’ confidence increase, as well as their willingness to participate and answer questions.
When we returned the following year to Travis Elementary to work with a new group of girls, we saw the previous year’s students asking us if they could do STEAM Town USA again. The new group of girls, rather than begrudgingly seeing STEAM Town USA as extra homework as the first group did initially, had heard about STEAM Town USA from the older students, and when asked what they would be doing in the first class, they enthusiastically said that they would be learning about science!
The students’ enthusiasm has been incredibly contagious, and after just one year at Travis, I was asked to bring the program to three additional schools in Goose Creek. With the help of ExxonMobil engineers and Lee College physics students and faculty, we have been able to work together to bring monthly STEAM outreach to about 50 students in Baytown each year.
For me, sharing my love for science and engineering with the girls is perhaps one of the most rewarding aspects of my job and my life. I love to see science and engineering empowering young girls and women.