STEAM Course Syllabus Instructor: M. Pendleton
Course Description Creativity, engineering, and ingenuity collide, combining industrial design with imagination. STEAM challenges students to fabricate the tools needed to solve the problems of the future. Design a functional chair out of cardboard inspired by the simplistic genius of Ray and Charles Eames. Create a geodesic dome out of recycled materials under the guidance of Buckminster Fuller’s principles of design. This course embraces the current “maker” culture, as seen at MIT’s Media Lab, Carnegie Mellon’s Digital Fabrication Lab, and more. STEAM is a fusion of engineering, architecture, physics, and art. Investigations will include the use of form, space, and composition. Students will investigate forms of composition and develop their ideas from a sketch to a blueprint to a prototype to a final structure. Fabrication mediums include cardboard, found objects, clay, and fiber. Analytical discussions of student work, including presentations will provide a cumulative summative assessment. Students will leave STEAM armed with a working artistic vocabulary, prepared to make advancements in 21st Century university and career settings. Guest speakers include practicing mechanical engineers, MIT graduates, and graphic designers. Students will participate in critiques, develop marketing proposals, and gain public speaking skills (the ability to ARTiculate). This class will particularly boost the confidence and language skills of EAL students as they look to broaden their horizons in western universities and foreign job markets.
Course Objectives ● ● ● ● ●
Establishing a vocabulary of sculptural and maker terminology Developing an individual method of inquiry and systems thinking Students will explore the aesthetics of engineering and design Students will learn to solve problems intelligently, looking at all sides of the issue Students will learn to communicate effectively as designers