STEAMagination event at UTC inspires the next generation

STEAMagination’s different stations included a miniature soccer game featuring robot players. Anna Clark, a senior at Chattanooga School for the Liberal Arts (in black sweatshirt), volunteered to work the event for Tennessee Valley Robotics. Photo by Noah Camacho.

The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga Challenger STEM Learning Center hosted its second-ever STEAMagination Festival on Saturday, Oct. 12, to help show attendees that learning can be fun for the whole family.

Rob Lein, an exploration specialist at the Challenger Center and national board-certified English Language Arts/Adolescence and Young Adulthood teacher, said the importance of events like STEAMagaination, designed for students in grades K-8 and their families, allows the center to continue its mission of inspiring and engaging a community of learners to pursue career pathways in science, technology, engineering, arts and Mathematics—known as STEAM.

“The first and foremost reason (for STEAMagination) is it connects all the members of this community,” Lein said. “Over here you have the University, but right over there you have Hamilton County Schools, and then you have a lot of business and nonprofit partners—and this brings them all together.”

This event, he said, is an opportunity for the community to come together to apply STEAM learning in an educational and entertaining way.

“The most important thing is that it’s super fun,” Lein said. “It reminds us as families, parents and students that we don’t have to just be entertained. We can do things with our hands. We discover, create, make mistakes and improve upon what we do, and that can be something that we can engage in as a family.”

Partnered with WTCI PBS, Hamilton County Schools, the Arts-Based Collaborative and Tennessee Valley Robotics, the STEAMagination Festival featured games and activities at different stations throughout the Challenger Center.

The events included making binary code bracelets, painting model solar systems and participating in space simulations. Tennessee Valley Robotics brought the field to the classroom with a miniature soccer game featuring robots pushing a soccer ball into a net.

Anna Clark, a senior at Chattanooga School for the Liberal Arts and a member of her school’s robotics team, knows the importance of volunteering for events like these.

“This is how I got involved in robotics in the first place,” Clark said. “Being able to help with events that allow kids to do the same thing that I have to do is pretty cool.

“When I was in fourth grade, I went to a STEM expo like this, and that’s what got me started in robotics. I joined the robotics team, and then I stayed with it until 11th grade, and we qualified for the world’s competition almost every single year.”

Lein emphasized the necessity of having the arts present as well as traditional STEAM activities, with Jennifer Daniels from the Arts-Based Collective playing live music throughout the event.

At one point, Lein joined Daniels, accompanying her on his electric guitar.

He said that knowing how instruments and music are made is just as applicable to the design process as building solar systems.

Lein highlighted the importance of days like these where kids can learn outside of the classroom in a fun and educational way.

“Honestly, I was a teacher for a long time, several decades in a classroom, and you get that experience, but it is different… they come in and from the get-go, they’re really excited about what they’re seeing and about going to space,” he said.