Sixty-five Gateway Academy students from Hazelwood North and Hazelwood Northwest middle schools visited the Parks College of Engineering, Aviation and Technology on the campus of Saint Louis University.
Gateway Academy is the summer session of the district’s Gateway to Technology (GTT) program and its partially funded by the Society of Manufacturing Engineers.
Phyllis Fairman and James Muska, teachers at the two schools, along with orchestra teacher Monica Holy, accompanied groups of sixth- and seventh-grade students as they visited three campus sites.
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The sites included the biomedical engineering building, McDonnell-Douglas Hall and Oliver Hall. The field trip exposed the students to new career fields in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) and provided them with an opportunity to see how parts of a college campus function.
“I think the trip was a huge success,” said Muskain a HSD statement. “The most important part was that the students were able to experience lessons that are impossible to have in our classrooms.
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"Every student was able to fly the jet simulator and some began to feel the effects of vertigo as their eyes overrode what their body felt, and I think the students now have biomedical engineering and material and aviation science on their career ‘radars.’”
Gail Stewart, the District’s special areas coordinator, said all of the students in the program plan to take either GTT or Project Lead the Way classes in the fall.