The Technology Association of North Texas has named Highland Park High School AP and organic chemistry teacher Wenzen Chuang a “Tech Titan of the Future.”
The trade association’s award recognizes a high school teacher for developing and implementing an innovative teaching technique or program that inspires student interest in math and/or science.
“Wenzen Chuang is truly a master teacher,” HPHS principal Jeremy Gilbert said. “He has the unique talent of challenging his students with high-level content while also offering a customized and high level of support.”
Chaung, who has taught in Highland Park ISD for nearly 23 years, coaches the University Interscholastic League (UIL) science team and serves as the UIL academics coordinator for the high school.
“His teaching ability is characterized by his desire to create an interactive, supportive, and rigorous learning environment that challenges students to think above the curriculum itself,” wrote former student Cameron Laurie in a nomination form.
Laurie, now a sophomore at the University of Texas at Austin, credited Chuang with “inspiring students like myself to pursue a career in medicine or other related STEM fields using the strong experiences and knowledge acquired through his instruction.”
“It was absolutely very gratifying to know that I made a difference and an impact on students and their career path,” Chuang said.
“The reason we study science
and math and difficult subjects like that is it really challenges students to work on their problem-solving abilities, their ability to process information, and I think it’s really critical, and it doesn’t really matter what field they go into when they get out of high school,” he said.
Chuang challenges his students with activities such as creating Dippin’ Dots-style ice cream (a process that requires liquid nitrogen) and a Shark Tank- style soap-making contest to see which students can make the best product.
Gilbert typically judges the soap-making contest.
“The soap project is a tangible example of what is possible when students are provided with a balance of content and space for creativity,” Gilbert said. “The student-led presentations for this project were filled with a high level of science know-how paired with the personalities and flair of the student designers.”
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Chuang had to find ways to teach the material and keep students engaged without the all-important on-campus lab.
He found a website with recorded videos of people doing labs.
“It’s not just watching the video,” Chuang explained. “They
have different instruments that they showed the video on, and they record data as they’re going through the process. We could actually, as best we could, keep up our lab curriculum by using this website and looking at the videos
of the labs they had conducted, record the measurements and record the data from the video, and then they would actually go through and do the calculations and analyze the data they collected to see what the results were.”
The reason we study science and math and difficult subjects like that is it really challenges students to work on their problemsolving abilities (and) their ability to process information.
Wenzen Chuang
As the commercial sector becomes ever more evolved, careers centered around science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) will see an increase in demand.
Since 1990, STEM occupations have grown 79%, accounting for 8.6 million jobs in the U.S. workforce. By 2025, another 3.5 million STEM jobs will need to be filled.
Unfortunately, there is a gender gap within these fields, as women only represent 34% of the STEM workforce.
The Girl Scouts of Northeast Texas is taking this hurdle head-on.
Having just hired one of the most distinguished teachers in the field of STEM education, the organization is looking to inspire confidence and promote critical thinking for future women in the workforce.
Jennifer Makins, a pioneer ing educator with a proven track record of strategically launch ing and growing large-scale initiatives, is the new ex ecutive director of the STEM Center of Ex cellence at Camp Whispering Cedars.
“I’m so excited to get in here and start helping this program continue to do amazing things,” she said.
Makins served the Parish Episcopal School in Dallas for 13 years, built multiple STEM programs, and won awards from NASA, Frontiers of Flight Mu seum, and many others.
She recently spoke during The Smith sonian’s Women’s Future Month and
is one of 125 female innovators named American Association for the Advancement of Science IF/ THEN Ambassadors as part of a Lyda Hill Philanthropies effort to inspire girls and advance women in STEM careers.
Of course, Makins sees her most significant accomplishments in the students she’s inspired.
“The more resilience we can instill in kids, the more resilience we can instill across the future corporate landscape,” she said. “With the IF/THEN Ambassador program, which the Girls Scouts are now affiliated with, the whole premise is if a girl can see a woman in STEM that looks
like them, they will have the confidence to pursue that field.”
With STEM careers accounting for an ever-growing component of the U.S. workforce, she noted that women must receive equal exposure to these disciplines at an early age.
“Much of the deficit in STEM careers for women comes from limited access to early educational opportunities,” Makins said. “With the Girl Scouts of Northeast Texas, we have the opportunity to show girls how STEM disciplines combined with creativity hold the key to solving many of the challenges that face us.”
Her new mission is to pick up where the STEM Center left off. This facility underwent a significant renovation in 2017, only to be shut down a couple of years later during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Efrain Rivera is taking his sixth-grade art class at Benjamin Franklin International Exploratory Academy down a new route by integrating technology with art.
He’s doing this with the help of a $2,200 grant from the Junior League of Dallas, which funded the purchase of 30 drawing pads to teach students how to create art in digital mediums.
In the first few months of using the drawing pads, students have learned digital drawing, gif making, and short animation creation.
“Most of them can be done in traditional art, but I wanted to introduce them to technology because it shows them a lot of tools they’ll use in high school and skills they can apply … if they start a career in design or art,” Rivera said.
Rivera said he’d seen increased classroom engagement since introducing the
tablets. Most of his students previously only had experience with two-dimensional mediums, so he’s been proud to show them something unique and watch them shine through their work.
“I think it helps all students, but especially those students who are not so artistic because … digitally you can draw a perfect circle, perfect square, perfect shapes so much faster, and you definitely don’t need to be artistic at all,” Rivera said. “I just show them steps to do, and everyone has enjoyed it.”
The sixth-grade art lessons also build upon students’ pre-existing knowledge of technology and applications. Rivera also hopes what they learn in art will translate into other subjects.
“Unfortunately, the STEM Center had to shut down because of the pandemic,” Makins said. “And we know the mental health impacts that the pandemic has had on students, so I’m looking forward to the opportunity to provide hands-on, engaging education and foster the skills of collaboration. That’s what excites me. This place is full of opportunities.”
To volunteer with the
of Northeast Texas, visit gsnetx.com or call 972-349-2400.
“Right now, we’re learning about creating short animations, and for example, if they wanted to apply that to science, they could create an animation for a science [project], like metamorphosis or something like that,” Rivera said.
“They can apply those skills they learned to display different things [at] different levels.”
Each semester, Rivera has a new set of students come through his class, and he plans to continue teaching them art in multiple mediums.
“This class set of tablets will impact so many students,” Rivera said. “I want to do half traditional art and half digital art; that way, they experience both.”
EfrainEfrain Rivera is teaching sixth graders how to blend technology with art and other subjects. EFRAIN RIVERA The Junior League of Dallas presented 51 Dallas ISD teachers with a total of $111,000 through its annual Grants for Innovative Teaching program.
I wanted to introduce them to technology because it shows them a lot of tools they’ll use in high school. Efrain Rivera
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Highland Park ISD is leading the way in STEAM education.
HPISD’s Moody Innovation Institute helps ensure that STEAM education is integrated into student learning, no matter where it is happening. This means all HP students have opportunities to go beyond textbooks and lectures and learn by participating in hands-on activities that are focused on the often complex real-world problems that tomorrow’s leaders will face.
STEAM education in HPISD begins when students first step on campus. Starting in elementary school, students learn how to solve fascinating hands-on problems that make direct connections to our amazing world.
This approach to early learning contributes to the district’s ability to deliver academic excellence by ensuring students begin to attain the skills they need to lead in their community and make an impact in the world around them even while in elementary school.
Engagement in STEAM activities continue to expand in intermediate and middle school as students transition from concrete to more abstract and creative thinking processes. Students actively participate in identifying real problems and discovering real solutions throughout their curricula.
From robotics and engineering clubs to presentations by HPHS students on complex subjects like sports injuries and brain science research, and competitive science fair research activities, students work to identify problems that need real solutions. Projects like the annual Water Walk help students learn about the difficulty some countries have in accessing clean water.
STEAM-infused lessons like the anatomy of the heart include expanded activities designed to help students make connections between theory and practice. Students conduct blood type research and in-class dissections led by visiting medical professionals before hosting community blood drives. During the past three years this project, in partnership with Carter Bloodcare, has impacted more than 1,100 lives.
Highland Park High School’s rigorous academic courses are complemented by engaging STEAM education. Through in-depth profession-based courses in engineering and design, business and entrepreneurship, brain science and health and environmental architecture, the Moody Advanced Professional Studies (MAPS) program provides HP juniors and seniors with one-of-a-kind hands-on business and professional experiences as they prepare for the world of higher education.
Learning alongside numerous industry experts, students are able to discover their direction as they prepare for post-secondary success. This makes the HPISD STEAM experience truly extraordinary.
STEAM in HPISD was initiated through a generous $5.8 million grant from the Moody Foundation to the Highland Park Education Foundation in August 2016. A recent second grant of $4.99 million will fund the first-ever research institute embedded in a public school setting, making HPISD a significant thought leader in STEAM education across the state and nation.
Two Bit Circus, which recently opened its second location in The Shops at Park Lane, does more than just house its “micro-amusement park.”
Its foundation puts on annual STEAM carnivals across the country, with a three-day event serving Dallas-Fort Worth each spring.
Two Bit Circus co-founders Brent Bushnell and Eric Gradman launched the STEAM carnivals in California as a Kickstarter in 2013.
After seeing success on the west coast, Rory Peacock, deputy executive director for the Region 11 Service Center in Fort Worth, approached the pair about bringing it to Dallas-Fort Worth.
“After Two Bit was a real company and we were doing tons of projects for big brands, we decided, let’s do something for ourselves,” Bushnell said. “We had done hundreds of events for other companies. We said, ‘Let’s do our own event,’ and the STEAM carnival was born.”
The Dallas-Fort Worth carnival, held annually at the Region 11 Service Center since 2016, brings an average of 3,500 people daily. The events feature Two Bit Circus games, outside companies such as Lockheed Martin coming in to teach youth about STEAM, and projects submitted by students who want to present and share their creations.
One activity Bushnell noted, a “Dunk Tank Flambé,” expands on the concept of a traditional dunk tank by launching the dunking “victim,” who wears a fire suit, into flames.
“We realized that the best games are the simplest games,” Gradman said. “One really powerful way to get kids inspired about what they can create is to pull back the curtain, open up the cabinets, let people look inside, and reveal the fact that under the most beautiful, complicated game is a simple set of components that anyone can work with.”
The carnival’s creators hope they can foster learning through each event.
“The STEAM carnival is a way of tricking people into using
their creativity,” Gradman said. “As you’re playing a game that was created by your buddy at a STEAM carnival, you’re looking around going, ‘Wow, I know how all these games work now,’ because you’ve been through the thought process of creating one yourself.”
The carnival is open to anyone who purchases a ticket for $3, but the foundation sometimes gives free ones to area school districts to bring underserved students.
The 2023 Dallas-Fort Worth STEAM carnival will run from Feb. 27 through March 1.
“We had a first grader whose mom emailed me the week after the carnival and said, ‘My daughter has already started researching what her project will be for next year’s STEAM carnival,’” Peacock said.
For more information about the Dallas-Fort Worth STEAM carnival, visit ESC11.net/ Page/8386. To learn more about the Two Bit Foundation across the country, see TwoBitCircus.org.
Broadway Dallas “teaching artists” took to Dallas ISD high school theater classrooms in the fall to bring STEAM curriculum to students.
The curriculum, themed after the musical Ain’t too Proud — The Life and Times of The Temptations, helped students learn video technology by creating music videos.
“We worked closely together to align this goal of using the partnership as a way to infuse STEM principles into theater classrooms and also to build advocacy for what theater looks like in Dallas ISD,” said Allison Bret, director of education and community partnerships at Broadway Dallas.
In conjunction with the in-class lessons, about 4,000 Dallas ISD students attended a private showing Sept. 13 of Ain’t too Proud at the Music Hall at Fair Park.
Dallas ISD teachers told C.C. Harbour, Broadway Dallas’ education program manager, that students especially appreciated the musical’s relevance to social issues now and during the civil rights era.
“There was an immediate connection with, ‘I can see myself in these characters. I can see my self in these situations or I
can see my family members having to endure some of these circumstances,’” Harbour said.
One of Broadway Dallas’ strategic plan’s pillars is to use theater for education. The organization’s CEO Ken Novice said he likes to refer to it as putting the “A” above STEM because theater can touch each of the elements: science, technology, engineering, and math.
“Presenting wonderful evenings in the theater for our audience is a core part of that, but (so) is this work in education,” Novice said.
The fall 2022 curriculum was the partnership’s second rendition, which started in fall 2021 with Hamilton-related marketing and design lessons.
The partnership was sponsored by the T.D. Jakes Foundation, which is committed to building bridges to opportunity for underserved populations.
“When you are engaged in activities in the classroom, that’s just one aspect,” said Dr. Jennifer Stimpson, chief program officer at the foundation. T.D. Jakes also wants to provide “out-of-classroom activities such as partnerships with Broadway Dallas and having students see STEAM in a variety of different nontraditional ways.”
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Medical school must wait but not Crohn’s disease research by Alcuin School junior Rohan Jagarlamudi.
The University of California, Irvine x Gifted and Talented Institute’s UCIxGATI Science Journal published the teen’s paper in its September issue.
Rohan became interested in Crohn’s disease because one of his relatives, a young adult, has it.
“I was inspired to help my relative and dig deeper into possible remedies for this,” Rohan said. “When I was writing the paper, it expanded into (a connection to) cancer and Type 2 diabetes.”
Rohan explained that his relative struggles with weight loss due to digestive system issues caused by Crohn’s disease.
“With my research, I wanted to get my own understanding of what is going on in this field, what research has been done already, and where I can make my own improvements or additions,” he said.
A year ago, Rohan enrolled in an online immunology course created by Rice University and learned more about cells, diseases, and viruses.
“It gave me my background on this subject,” he said.
Then this summer, he enrolled in an online course offered by UCIxGATI to teach students how to write research papers.
“I took all sorts of articles that already
existed and made my own connections with my own hypothesis,” he said.
His 15-page paper, the final assignment for the course, explored the potential benefits of short-chain fatty acids such as the butyrate produced when “good” gut bacteria help the digestive system break down
fiber in
The conclusion: “The most relevant metabolite discussed was butyrate due to its participation in several cell pathways and its various functions in the human immune system.”
Rohan didn’t expect his paper would get
published until he got an email from UCI expressing interest in reviewing it for the journal.
He is grateful to his parents, Choudary Jagarlamudi and Yeshodra Sagar.
“My dad gave me a lot of support through this. He was able to provide me the opportunity to write the paper and become smarter,” the teen said. “My mom is a doctor. She was one of my influences in my interest in medicine — to follow in her footsteps.”
Rohan added that his relative with Crohn’s disease “read the paper and was impressed and proud of what I am doing. He was proud that he was the inspiration for me writing the paper.”
Although Rohan hasn’t decided on a college, his plans include pursuing a career in medicine and doing more research on Crohn’s disease.
“This paper was a review, and there wasn’t any lab work,” he said. “I can research actual data from normal and diseased patients and try to find hard evidence that I can use to back up my review. I’ve been reaching out to get that started.”
I was inspired to help my relative and dig deeper into possible remedies for this.Rohan Jagarlamudi (second from left) poses with his father, Choudary Jagarlamudi; brother, Milan Jagarlamudi; grandmother, Ratna Kumari; and mother, Yeshodra Sagar. JAGARLAMUDI FAMILY
By Rachel Snyder rachel.snyder@peoplenewspapers.com
Boone Elementary students took a day trip to the “STEAM Fair of Texas” without leaving the campus.
For the first station, a Red River Showdown football game-themed field goal challenge, students had to design a makeshift paper football and flick it across a printed “field” with end zones and field lines.
“The kids had to figure out how do we make a shape that’s aerodynamic,” said Highland Park ISD elementary STEAM instructional
coach Ashley Jones. “They were just practicing a whole bunch of measurement (too). They had to (the keep the football) in the area of the field, not outside the perimeter.”
“The kids just had fun putting what they’re learning into practice,” Jones continued.
Another Oct. 7 activity included a foodie arch challenge which tasked students with making an arch using crackers and frosting. They learned about how arches help distribute weight and prevent bridges from collapsing.
“Rather than just doing a simple challenge of build something, they now, every time they (go over a bridge,) know why it’s
there,” Jones said.
For the third station, a bungee challenge, students pushed dolls tied to rubber bands from various heights to see how close they could get them to the ground without touching it.
At the last station, students used multiplication, addition, and subtraction skills to solve problems that occurred during the Red River rivalry game.
Finally, the children made makeshift stands next to the fields from the football field activity.
“Everybody was helping each other,” Jones said. “That was probably the coolest part of the whole lesson was all these kids not caring what team they were on. They just cared about having fun and completing the tasks the best they could.”
Ursuline Academy creates experiences unlike any other.Boone Elementary School pupils took measurements and made markings while figuring out which “football” shapes were the most aerodynamic and why. ASHLEY JONES/HIGHLAND PARK ISD
The kids had to figure out how do we make a shape that’s aerodynamic.
Ashley Jones
