STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math) occupations are the fastest growing employment opportunities both in the U.S. and around the world. Everything from the infrastructure that makes up our cities, to the smartphones in our pockets, involves scientists and engineers at some point in their development and production.
The development, use, and application of technology is a key economic driver, and is the only way the country can lead the way into the future.
But studying and working in the STEM fields have even greater benefits to the individual, creating people with strong critical thinking and decision-making skills, scientific literacy, and an innovation-focused outlook. These will be essential for success in the technology-driven knowledge economy of the future.
This is why introducing students to STEM during elementary and high school is essential. Exposing young minds to STEM fields early means they are more likely to engage in STEM opportunities and develop a passion for one of the STEM fields. This is especially true when it comes to closing the gender and ethnicity gaps in many STEM fields by introducing girls and ethnic minorities into STEM.
Explore STEM with the SciFest All Access 2021
STEM fair events are one of the best ways to give youth and young adults the opportunity to learn about STEM and all the possible areas of education and careers available.
The USA Science and Engineering Festival (USA SEF) is the largest STEM fair in North America, showcasing STEM events, presentations, and interactive activities aimed at introducing K-12 students to science, technology, engineering and mathematics.
In previous years, the USA SEF took place in Washington, D.C., with several hundred booths featuring activities, demonstrations, and informative experts ready to engage students of all ages in STEM. In 2020, the USA SEF transitioned to an all-virtual event SciFest All Access in light of the COVID-19 pandemic, and in October of 2021 the SciFest All Access event returns.
Last year, 75,000 students, teachers, parents, military families, and STEM enthusiasts registered to attend, with representation from all 50 U.S. states as well as 99 countries from around the world.
“What the USA Science and Engineering Festival is doing is so important, because it is tangible science,” says Tamara Robertson, science communicator and one of the hosts of this year’s SciFest All Access. “These kids are getting hands-on, they are getting to play with demos, they are being exposed to science they may not otherwise be exposed to.”
While nothing beats a hands-on experience, the interactive virtual SciFest All Access makes for a great alternative—and in some ways, it is even more accessible to students because attending the virtual event is not constrained by geography or the need for travel.
“I know it’s been a little bit weird right now, with the shift to virtual environments, but there are also some pros to this change. The pivot to a virtual event wasn’t an easy one for the festival; like anything else, bandwidth is an issue, hosting is an issue. But the Festival has done an incredible job, and now instead of just having a local touch point, they have a global touch-point to inspire kids. Their speakers are diverse and inclusive, and we all have different passions when it comes to science,” Robertson adds.
“The new virtual environment for SciFest, it’s so interactive. It’s kind of like the kids are getting to play a video game when they go into different rooms, they learn more about science. It ends up being so fun for the kids, but also educational.” The festival also provides educators with resources and video content to help them bring this experience and excitement into the classroom.
SciFest All Access features seven exhibit STEM Zones, including Energy, Engineering & Tech, Health & Medicine, Intelligence & Security, Natural Sciences, Space & Aviation and Chemistry. Each zone contains booths representing top life sciences universities, high-tech and life science corporations, non-profit organizations and government agencies. This includes NASA, Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the U.S. Air Force, FAA, U.S. Space Force, CACI, Intel, AstraZeneca and Broadcom Foundation, among many others. The virtual exhibit booths give attendees the opportunity to submit questions to exhibitors, as well as viewing presentations or demonstrations.
Where the Action Is: The STEM Stage
While the booths offer all the details of almost any topic you could name, the STEM Stage is where the big action takes place. STEM role models and speakers from across the country take to the STEM Stage with STEM-focused talks, performances, and demonstrations.
There is so much going on during the event that it’s hard to know where to start, but we spoke to a few of the STEM Stage presenters to get a sneak peek into the upcoming event.
Tamara Robertson: Speaker, Engineer, TV Host and Actor
A former member of the Mythbusters franchise, Tamara Robertson now dedicates much of her time to STEM outreach to encourage young women to study STEM and pursue STEM careers. She is a regular at comic conventions with her “Superhero Science” presentations, as well as one of the leading female science hosts and engineers on the Science Channel.
“I have been with the USA Science and Engineering Festival since 2018, at their annual festivals,” said Tamara. “Since then, everything pivoted virtually for doing both the STEM Stage stuff, as well as keynoting the X-STEM event. And now, they have invited me to co-host this year with Justin Schaifer, known as Mr. Fascinate, which is absolutely incredible. This year, it’s all virtual, of course, and it’s been a fun kind of evolution of the festival.”
As co-host of the festival, Tamara will be one of the faces welcoming guests into the virtual event, and providing information and directions on how to navigate the virtual environment. “When you enter the digital environment, we’re there to meet you and greet you, show you around, and tell you about the really cool swag that is in your backpack—which, there’s going to be a lot of fun stuff, including my science outreach comics. We are kind of the guides for the day, and we also will be performing on the STEM Stage. But out main focus is to make sure that everyone knows how to get where they want to go, and enjoy the festival to the fullest.”
Along with her hosting duties, Robertson will be presenting on the STEM Stage during the live festival. “I’m going to be doing a fun series called ‘Ask Auntie’ where I answer kids’ questions. I have four nieces and a nephew, and they always bring me the coolest questions as well as facts. So I was doing these offhand science videos for them,” Tamara says. “I tried to make them at the child level, bite-size level science. I’ve done everything from the truth about sloth poop, to why your shadow grows as you’re swinging, and where those mystery bruises come from and how to get rid of them.”
“Last year I put out an episode of my Superhero Science show about Elasti-girl, so I am hoping to do another episode this year, as well. Get the kids excited, and bring superpowers to real life with real science. It’s awesome.”
Roy Moye III: The Singing Engineer
Roy Moye III brings together his love of music and performance, and his love of aerospace engineering, to entertain and inspire young audiences with high-energy STEMusic stage performances. Popularly known as “the Singing Engineer,” Roy aims to motivate kids and teens to pursue STEM as a field of study and as a career.
Moye studied aerospace engineering in college, and in 2015 began working as a structural design engineer at Spirit Aerosystems, which designs and builds large aero structures for companies such as Boeing and Airbus.
“But all the while, I’ve been singing,” says Moye. “Since I was five or six years old, and that became a love and passion of mine. I don’t play any instruments, but singing has always been a part of my life. Once I got to college, I thought, ‘Wow, I could really do something with this.’ And once I started working, I put out my first R&B EP, and I really loved this. I wanted to do this full time, and to continue to work at engineering getting to do really cool things like designing parts for planes that are currently flying around the world.”
After almost five years of releasing music while working as an engineer, the brainchild of bringing these two things together came to be. “I have a passion for diversity in STEM,” Moye says. “I happen to be half Black, quarter Puerto Rican, and quarter Mexican. Being Black and Latino, you go through your engineering career, starting in college, and when you look around there are just not many people who look like you. Black STEM professionals only make up nine percent of the industry, and Latino professionals only make up seven percent. Then there is even more disparity when we talk about women in STEM. So that became a passion of mine.”
Using music to bring kids into STEM became the vehicle for Moye to share his passion for engineering and encourage diversity in STEM fields. “I wrote the first song, called STEMusic, which is our theme song, and fell in love. I was just, ‘Okay, this is what I want to do.’ So I launched the company [STEMusic] officially in the fall of 2019.”
The USA Science and Engineering Festival brought Moye on as one of the presenters for SciFest All Access last year, and he is set to reprise his performances in the 2021 virtual event. “We will be presenting two songs: ‘Deep Sea Dive,’ which is about deep sea animal life; and ‘Bridges.’ Possibly one more STEMusic moment, as well.”
“These STEM events are important for exposure,” Moye adds. “Statistics from many agencies and research firms show that between the number of STEM jobs that are open right now, and STEM careers that will be open in the future that may not exist now, there are not enough people to fill these positions, especially in the United States. So exposure for kids, especially Black and Brown students, to get them excited about these roles is important.”
“The USA Science and Engineering Festival is making it fun, with their in-person events and their virtual events,” Moye says. “The thing I love about the virtual event is that all students have access to this. It’s free. Students have access to fun, engaging and entertaining lessons where the learn about science, technology, engineering and math. Even if they don’t decide to go into STEM, the lessons they are learning through the festival are great lessons for life, because a STEM foundation is the best foundation.”
“And students need role models, so the more that kids can see professionals who look like them, who are performing and doing experiments, they think, ‘Wow, I can actually be that because I see it.’ The USA science and engineering festival provides a platform for that, especially from a diversity standpoint by having speakers and performers and scientists and engineers of color, women in STEM who are on these programs and in general just being professionals and doing cool things.”
Kevin J. DeBruin: NASA Rocket Scientist-turned-Space Educator
Working at NASA JPL designing spacecraft might be where Kevin DeBruin got his start, but he fell in love with science communication and these days spends his time as a Professional Space Educator hosting events, giving TEDx talks, and educating young people about STEM.
DeBruin’s interest in STEM began when he watched the movie October Sky as a kid. “I knew right then that I wanted to be a NASA Rocket Scientist. I fell in love with SciComm when my fifth-grade teacher asked me to come back and talk to her class after my first NASA internship,” DeBruin shares. “The look on the kids' faces, the questions they asked, the excitement and inspiration that filled the room gave me the most surreal feeling and I knew I had to do more of that.”
The greatest thing for a student interested in STEM is to be exposed to someone who has done it before, and who they can relate to, DeBruin says. “STEM events that bring individuals from all over, from different industries, backgrounds and perspectives, gives a breadth of options for students to relate to.”
“A lot of people in my hometown laughed at me when I said I wanted to work for NASA,” he shares. “No one knew anyone who had ever done that. It was out of reach. If I saw someone who was in my situation that achieved that goal, I would know it was possible, know it could be done. By having STEM events like this, we can show students it has been done by many people. It also showcases many different types of STEM positions and areas that a student may not have been exposed to before.”
“I think the greatest benefit to virtual events is the increased reach, a greater audience,” he adds. “Anyone anywhere can tune in and be exposed to the wonders of space and science.”
DeBruin has two presentations lined up for the STEM Stage at this year’s SciFest All Access, both of which feature exciting questions about planetary science.
The first is titled ‘How Many Earths Can Fit Inside the Sun?’ after one of the questions DeBrin gets asked most often. “It’s honestly the one I get asked most frequently, and not just by little kids, either! What I love is that it creates a fun curiosity about space that isn’t technical or heady. It is kind of a silly question, but that’s what is so great about it. I know you want the answer, but you’ll have to go watch the presentation to find out….that it’s ~1.3 Million!”
DeBruin’s second presentation is on a hot topic: Mars. “When are we going to Mars? What’s out there? We see Mars as the next destination for humans in the space race. It’s exciting to make discoveries, it’s why we explore. ‘Water, Ice and Snow on Mars’ includes a fun science demonstration with dry ice, because that’s the type of ice found on Mars.”
And these are just a small sample of the wide variety of the 100+ presenters, booths and activities featured during the SciFest All Access. The event also features a STEM scavenger hunt, a zone for students to display their own science projects, and an educator resource center with information on incorporating the SciFest into the classroom.
Come Join the STEM Fun!
SciFest All Access 2021 will run live for a full week, from October 18th to 24th. After that, the event content will be accessible on-demand for the following month, from October 25th through November 25th. This gives students the chance to check out more exhibits, watch videos of presentations they may have missed live, and access all the event resources. However, live chat or Q&A with exhibitors will only be available during the live event dates; during the on-demand period, questions can be left at a booth which will be answered at a later time.
Both the live event and the on-demand access are available 24/7, though live chat will only be available during regular daytime hours between 9am and 5pm EST for the days of the live event.
Registration is open now for individuals and groups, and once the registration process is complete attendees will receive their login information for the event via a confirmation email.
Visit the SciFest All Access website to register and see the full list of speakers and booths.