On March 8, Paradise Valley Community College at Black Mountain will host the fifth annual STEAMtastic, an AZ SciTech Signature event. The event uses an innovative, hands-on, approach to promoting science, technology, engineering, arts, and math education. The goal of the event is to make STEAM fun by showing attendees how science, technology, engineering, arts, and math are a part of their everyday life. We hope to encourage them to further explore these fields and view STEAM careers as attainable. Event activities are intentionally selected to showcase STEAM fields and make STEAM accessible to both volunteers and community members of varied ages and backgrounds.
“STEAMtastic and our Star Parties provide a great out-of-classroom learning opportunity. Stepping onto a college campus can be scary, but we have young students who have been coming to STEAMtastic for the past 4 years, and they now come with their friends and classmates,” said Loretta Mondragon, Associate Dean of Academic Affairs at Paradise Valley Community College. “They know that this college is theirs too and are looking forward to taking classes with us. It’s great to see these young people value education and, for the college, it’s part of our effort to drive positive social change through their educational journey.”
On March 8, from 5:00 pm – 8:00 pm, the PVCC at Black Mountain campus will be transformed. Over eighty STEAM-related activities will be available for attendees to see, touch, smell, and taste. You can make your own bubble gum, extract DNA from a strawberry, and practice your fingerprinting skills. In addition you can learn what a Tubulum is and check out a Rube Goldberg machine designed by the PVCC Honors students. “The projects I saw were absolutely incredible,” said Vincent Jacovo, an event attendee, age 13. “I got to participate in many different experiments and ate some of the most interesting food. I feel that when other kids attend STEAMtastic they will truly have a blast.” To learn more about STEAMtastic, or RSVP, visit https://www.paradisevalley.edu/black-mountain/steamtastic.
From 7:00 pm – 10:00 pm, the event becomes a star party. The dark skies of Cave Creek provide the perfect opportunity for viewing constellations. The Phoenix Astronomical society and PVCC Astronomy Faculty will provide telescopes and help you make the most of this chance to observe the night sky. The Black Mountain campus also features a newly-installed 14 inch Schmidt Cassegrain telescope. This telescope collects 3,136 times more light than the human eye, allowing viewers to explore the colors of the Orion Nebula and storms on Jupiter. To RSVP for the star party, email [email protected].
Paradise Valley Community College at Black Mountain is a satellite site of Paradise Valley Community College. It is located in the northern part of Maricopa County, just south of Carefree Highway. PVCC at Black Mountain offers a one stop shop environment for registration, advisement, and cashiering services.
