Students present projects at STEAM showcase

Award-winning food innovations, science and art, and global outreach were featured during the Bethel Park High School presentation at the 2016 STEAM Showcase, sponsored by the Allegheny Intermediate Unit. Bethel Park was one of 28 area school districts that participated in this event, which showed how education is being transformed using $20,000 STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, the Arts and Mathematics) grants that were made possible by the Chevron, Claude Worthington Benedum, and Grable foundations.

The Bethel Park presentation featured tasty hummus recipes, portraits made of rust, spin art bike paintings, conductive sewing creations and global science projects – all projects that were conducted during the 2015-16 school year thanks to the STEAM grant. This grant helped the high school to create three more Innovation Studios to encourage and cultivate STEAM learning experiences throughout all academic disciplines. The high school now has an Innovation Studio on all floors of its academic wing.

At the showcase, attendees enjoyed learning about all of the projects, but everybody wanted to try to create their own spin art painting by riding the Spin Art Bike, which the students built. Attendees also enjoyed tasting the award-winning Buffalo Chicken Hummus recipe created by family and consumer science students. BPHS art and science students made portraits with rust, after the students studied the chemical reactions that were necessary to produce it. Clothing students used conductive thread to design “light up” clothing as part of a “Project Runway”-style challenge. Attendees also learned about the joint soil study conducted by science students in Bethel Park and a school in the coffee growing region of Honduras. What the students are learning in school are real-life applications of science, technology, engineering, arts and math. These are the kinds of projects that they see every day at Bethel Park High School.