Students at Highland Elementary who participated in the afterschool STEM program shared their projects from the Western Regional Science Fair with classmates on Tuesday. Two students from the University of Minnesota Crookston, Michaela Lano and Hannah Zhao, helped work with the kids on their projects. Lona and Zhao each brought a slightly different background in STEM to help the students. “Mr. Trostad was looking for an afterschool science program,” said Lona. “Highland already has afterschool reading and afterschool math but he was looking for something more STEM-specific. Hannah’s major is software engineering and mine is health sciences and biology, so she covers math and engineering and I cover the science.”
Each of the students picked a project that interested them explained Lano. “We used a website that comes up with different science ideas that the kids used to come up with their ideas for the science fair,” said Lano. “We’ve just been helping them order what they need obviously and with what they don’t understand. But for the most part, they picked something that was interesting to them and have worked very independently.”
Jaleianie Hebert and Katie Seaver took second place in the Elementary portion of the science fair with their project which Seaver explains, “We wanted to know what would happen if we can make salt water into fresh water for people who can’t get fresh water.”
