When you think about the future, what excites you most? For us, it’s the potential of today’s youth to change the world, especially after seeing—and feeling—the palpable energy thousands of students brought to the Experience STEAM event. It was downright electric!
The Experience STEAM event was hosted by Mall of America® in partnership with the National Center for Autonomous Technologies, the National Science Foundation, and the Minnesota Colleges of Excellence to inspire new potential career paths in the science, technology, engineering, arts, and math (STEAM) industries. The event shed a light on key, in-demand industries that allow students the opportunity to experiment, create, and solve problems to make the world work better for all of us.
Running for five days across every public space in MOA, Experience STEAM included activities such as video game design, intro to flight, a scooter-building camp, and a youth drone sports championship. The event was free and open to the public, with some free private classes and seminars for activities that couldn’t support a large group (our favorite of these was the build your own electric guitar session!).
The signature event was the VEX Robotics Competition, one of only a handful of such competitions nationwide each year that sends the winner to the world championship. Nearly 1,000 students from coast-to-coast and internationally competed with impressive, top-of-the-line robots they built from scratch.
Nothing can inspire hope in the future quite like seeing young people take over the Mall for a week of integrated learning full of discovery and fun.