Inside the School District’s first STEM Expo

The line for the Finishing Trades Institute presentation only got longer as more students heard about the opportunity to virtually spray paint a wall.
Based in the Byberry neighborhood in the Northeast, the Finishing Trades Institute of the Mid-Atlantic Region’s vocational program uses virtual reality to train students how to spray paint. It was just one of the programs on display at the School District’s first STEM Expo at Temple University’s Liacouras Center Tuesday.
Domenic Gaeta, the Institute’s Painter and Wallcover Coordinator, touched a button on his computer screen to clear the virtual wall. After properly putting on a virtual reality headset, a student stands facing a black wall and holds a sprayless hose. The student sprays blue paint onto the virtual wall, which can be seen on the computer screen.
“Instead of using actual paint, we use this method since it’s also better for the environment,” Gaeta said.

All around, other booths neatly organized in the Liacouras Center are buzzing with student excitement and interest as they try out new food, discuss the editing involved behind the production of Captain America: Civil War, use micropipettes to transfer small amounts of liquids between containers and experiment with electrical circuits. Junior Reserve Officers from the local JROTC program roamed the expo areas, in what appeared to be an effort to ensure order and safety of the kids.
The Expo, organized by the District and the Mayor’s Office US2020 STEM Initiative, sought to expose around 1,000 seventh- and eighth-graders to Career and Technical Education (CTE) programs offered by the School District and careers in the culinary arts, healthcare and STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) fields. Astronomer Derrick Pitts keynoted the event.
The District has been working to up its STEM game in recent years. Last year, it held its first district-wide tech competition, which highlighted winners like 11-year-old app developer Philip Parkinson. Still, schools across the city struggle to keep up, forced to work with outdated desktops and a lack of standardized tech curriculum.
Opening up the ceremony, David Kipphut, Deputy of Career and Technical Education for the School District of Philadelphia and one of the main organizers of the expo, introduced the event as a new initiative to promote STEM careers in an age when technology performs a vital role in society.
“This is part of the District’s move to make sure that students are career ready and better informed of what they’re doing when they enter high school and college,” he said.
Check out more scenes from the expo below.