Middle Level STEAM Program Offers Unique Experiential Learning Opportunities

Notre Dame Preparatory School's Middle Level STEAM program has been Living the Mission outside the classroom, engaging in dynamic experiential learning opportunities that bring science, technology, engineering, art, and math to life.  Launching NDP's seven-year STEAM education experience, the program introduces students to the many academic and career opportunities STEAM subjects present. Over the past few months, students have taken part in hands-on projects alongside professional engineers, immersing themselves in real-world problem-solving and collaboration.

 

“The most significant part of these experiential learning opportunities is the opportunity that the students have to work side by side and interact with professional engineers from all different industries,” said Mary Agnes Sheridan, Director and Department Chairperson of NDP’s STEAM Program. “Those personal interactions and hands-on activities—they get to experience what it’s like to be an engineer, be on a project, and see how engineers from different areas have to cooperate and work together.”

 

Beyond technical skills, these experiences highlight the importance of communication, creativity, and critical thinking—essential tools for success in any field. “It really emphasizes not only what an exciting career opportunity engineering is but how important these skills are outside of the classroom,” Sheridan added. “And whenever I go back and ask a former student why they picked engineering as a career path, they always go back to some experience they had in one of these experiential learning opportunities. That’s when they really discovered they wanted to be an engineer.”

 

Learn more about some of these experiential learning opportunities below.

Our Middle Level Robotics team, comprised of 6th- and 7th-grade students, competed in the 10th Annual Ridgely Robotics Extravaganza on Saturday, January 25. The students showed great sportsmanship and perseverance at the VEX Rapid Relay competition, enhancing their driving and coding skills.

NDP’s Middle Level Egg Drop competition was held on Thursday, January 30, in the Dining Room during lunch. Fourteen teams comprised of more than 70 Middle Level students competed in the in-house competition to determine which teams would represent the school in Notre Dame Prep’s Science National Honor Society (SNHS) Egg Drop Challenge. The results are as follows: 

 

 

The 7th- and 8th-grade winning teams moved on to compete in the SNHS Egg Drop Challenge against 16 teams from other local schools on Saturday, February 15, where NDP’s Team Egg-celente took first place. The three students each received a $100 Amazon gift card and a $1,000 scholarship upon entrance to NDP’s 9th Grade, which is renewable for four years.

The 74th Engineers Week took place from February 16–23. Founded by the National Society of Professional Engineers (NSPE) in 1951, EWeek is dedicated to raising public awareness of engineers' positive contributions to quality of life and ensuring a diverse and well-educated future engineering workforce by increasing understanding of and interest in engineering and technology careers. Our Middle Level STEAM students took part in the following activities during this week:

To celebrate Women in Construction Week, which takes place during the first full week in March every year, NDP's Engineering classes were visited by several members of The Whiting-Turner Contracting Company on Monday, March 3, to discuss career pathways in construction management and the many projects on which they have worked. Students also had the chance to take part in activities that focused on project management, including budgeting and communications skills.

Special thanks to our guest speakers, and all those at Whiting-Turner who made this week possible—many of whom share a special connection with NDP as alumnae or parents: