The Lawrence Arts Center is teaming up with the Kansas Enrichment Network this month to present a virtual conference focusing on engaging girls and underrepresented populations in STEM and STEAM programs.
Presented in partnership with the KC STEM Alliance and Million Girls Moonshot, the STEAM Summit will be offered virtually April 22-23 to community leaders and after school professionals. The conference will be an opportunity for educators to expand their knowledge of STEAM education, which seeks to provide science, technology, engineering, arts and math education that is integrated across those disciplines.
Featured guests include Dr. Nettrice Gaskins, an African American digital artist, academic, cultural critic and advocate of STEAM fields; Cesar Jung-Harada, a French-Japanese inventor, environmentalist, entrepreneur and educator living in Hong Kong; Dr. Debbie Berebichez, the first Mexican woman to graduate from Stanford University with a PhD in Physics; and the Art’s Center’s very own Neal Barbour, former director of our youth education program who is now teaching at Bishop Seabury Academy in Lawrence.
Gaskins, whose art explores “techno-vernacular creativity” and Afrofuturism, has taught multimedia, computational media, visual art, and advanced placement computer science principles to high school students who majored in the arts. In education youth, she seeks to identify methods, modes, techniques and strategies to embed culture into STEAM education.
“As an educator, my goal is to help students construct new knowledge through their engagement in constructing personally meaningful projects,” she said. “My work addresses an ongoing problem which shows that almost every STEAM discipline has lower participation by African American, Native American, and Latino students.”
For more information and registration, please visit the Kansas STEAM Summit website!