{"id":10518,"date":"2024-01-26T09:21:27","date_gmt":"2024-01-26T15:21:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.wisconsin.edu\/all-in-wisconsin-new\/?post_type=campus_story&p=10518"},"modified":"2024-01-26T09:21:27","modified_gmt":"2024-01-26T15:21:27","slug":"uw-stouts-stem-fest-welcomes-upward-bound-students-from-six-regional-high-schools","status":"publish","type":"campus_story","link":"https:\/\/www.wisconsin.edu\/all-in-wisconsin\/story\/uw-stouts-stem-fest-welcomes-upward-bound-students-from-six-regional-high-schools\/","title":{"rendered":"UW-Stout\u2019s STEM Fest welcomes Upward Bound students from six regional high schools"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Photo<\/a>
Upward Bound students in UW-Stout biology lab. \/ UW-Stout<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Students\u2019 hands-on experiences in biology, engineering labs show them what polytechnic degrees can offer<\/h2>\n

About 40 high school students from six northwestern Wisconsin schools recently visited the University of Wisconsin-Stout to participate in hands-on workshops at STEM Fest.<\/p>\n

As participants in the Upward Bound program, the students have the opportunity to explore what colleges around Wisconsin and Minnesota have to offer through tours, hands-on learning experiences and engagement sessions.<\/p>\n

UW-Stout welcomed the students with two workshops that demonstrated what a polytechnic university has to offer for degree programs and future careers in STEM \u2014 science, technology, engineering and mathematics.<\/p>\n

The students were from Barron, Hayward, Shell Lake, Siren, Turtle Lake and Unity. Through these hands-on experiences, they got a glimpse at what UW-Stout has to offer and could imagine themselves studying in a university lab, doing on day one.<\/p>\n

Sasha Weegman, adviser of the Upward Bound West Program, explained, \u201cUpward Bound is a federal college readiness program. Our main goal is to help low-income and first-generation students get into college. We take a lot of college campus field trips and have a summer program on a college campus. We do a lot of work with the students during the school year to help them make sure they are on the right path to getting into college.\u201d<\/p>\n

UW-Stout professors and staff planned and led the activities, each of which focused on the electrical connections between\u00a0biology<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0engineering<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Students split into two groups and explored two lab classrooms in UW-Stout\u2019s Jarvis Hall Science Wing.<\/p>\n

In the first lab, the students created a pulse rate monitor from a kit that included a breadboard, Arduino (brains of the circuit), an LED screen to output the sensor device and a pulse sensor to measure the pulse on their finger. When the students completed the circuit, they were able to visually see their pulse rate beat per minute.<\/p>\n

Electrical engineering\u00a0Professor Ahmet Turkmen<\/strong>\u00a0wanted students to learn to, \u201cuse their imagination to build on the basic knowledge they learned from this lab to design more complicated circuits that could be used for diagnosis or monitoring of people’s physiological condition.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the second lab, students did a series of mini-units, that included learning about how the nervous system works and visualizing how the nervous system communicates with their muscles, visualizing electrical messages as they travel through the heart, and seeing a real human brain and spinal cord, as well as a human heart with a pacemaker.<\/p>\n

Summer Thorp, a freshman at Hayward High School, reflected on her experience in the labs and said, \u201cThe whole experience was very new. We have not gone over anything about the nerves or heart system in school, and if we did it was very basic in middle school.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gunner Imme, a sophomore at Siren High School who wants to go into biomedical engineering or biomedical chemistry, explained why doing on day one is so important to him.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have to watch how someone does something, or I need to do it myself to learn it. Day one experiences give you job experience right then and there. At Stout, you get to learn things hands-on, which is extremely awesome because I don\u2019t think I have ever seen a school do that. The small classes are amazing, so if you went to a huge college with like 300 kids, the professor wouldn\u2019t even know your name. I feel like you would be able to get a connection with your professors here and get to know them.\u201d<\/p>\n

The students, who come from many backgrounds and have vast career aspirations, said they learned a lot from their day on campus. Many did not know UW-Stout offered so many hands-on labs that allow them to utilize equipment they could potentially use out in the field once they graduate.<\/p>\n

They also said Upward Bound has given them the opportunity to see universities up close.<\/p>\n

\u201cUpward Bound has helped me understand what my future could be if I go to college compared to if I don\u2019t,\u201d said Barron High School freshman Bethany Bigner, who wants to pursue forensic science or bioengineering.<\/p>\n

As a university industry partner, 3M sent representative Caroline Muehlenkamp to talk with the students and answer any of their questions about the company or the industry in general.<\/p>\n

Muehlenkamp encouraged them to, \u201ctry new things because you never know what you might like to do.\u201d She explained how she prepared herself for college by taking AP courses in high school and then went on to say, \u201ctry those different classes and clubs to see what you like and what you don\u2019t like because it might surprise you.\u201d<\/p>\n

UW-Stout has collaborated with Upward Bound in the past and will continue this partnership to help show students what college and UW-Stout specifically have to offer them.<\/p>\n

UW-Stout\u2019s\u00a0College of Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics and\u00a0Management<\/a>\u00a0offers 20 undergraduate and 11 graduate programs.<\/p>\n

Within CSTEMM, is the\u00a0School of Engineering<\/a>, offering undergraduate programs in\u00a0computer and electrical engineering<\/a>,\u00a0manufacturing engineering<\/a>,\u00a0mechanical engineering<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0plastics engineering<\/a>. CSTEMM’s\u00a0biology department<\/a>\u00a0offers undergraduate programs in\u00a0applied biochemistry and molecular biology<\/a>;\u00a0applied science<\/a>; and\u00a0environmental science.<\/a><\/p>\n

\n

Written by Sky William<\/p>\n

Link to original story: https:\/\/www.uwstout.edu\/about-us\/news-center\/uw-stouts-stem-fest-welcomes-upward-bound-students-six-regional-high-schools<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Students\u2019 hands-on experiences in biology, engineering labs show them what polytechnic degrees can offer About 40 high school students from six northwestern Wisconsin schools recently visited the University of Wisconsin-Stout to participate in hands-on workshops at STEM Fest. As participants in the Upward Bound program, the students have the opportunity to explore what colleges around […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":10519,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","institution":[90],"story_category":[],"class_list":["post-10518","campus_story","type-campus_story","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","institution-uw-stout"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wisconsin.edu\/all-in-wisconsin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/campus_story\/10518","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wisconsin.edu\/all-in-wisconsin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/campus_story"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wisconsin.edu\/all-in-wisconsin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/campus_story"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wisconsin.edu\/all-in-wisconsin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wisconsin.edu\/all-in-wisconsin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10518"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wisconsin.edu\/all-in-wisconsin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10519"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wisconsin.edu\/all-in-wisconsin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10518"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"institution","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wisconsin.edu\/all-in-wisconsin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/institution?post=10518"},{"taxonomy":"story_category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wisconsin.edu\/all-in-wisconsin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/story_category?post=10518"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}