Key Highlights:
- STEM education is a cohesive learning paradigm based on real-world applications and teaching methods
- STEM education approach prepares professionals who can transform society with innovation and sustainable solutions
- The STEM Marin science program by the Novato Unified School District offers learning in engineering, biotechnology, and comprehensive tracks
What is STEM Education?
STEM education has gained significant importance due to its integrated approach curriculum that includes science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. Instead of learning these 4 disciplines separately, STEM integrates these into a cohesive learning paradigm based on real-world applications and teaching methods. Currently, there is a huge demand for workers in STEM-related jobs. Catering to this increasing demand, Novato Unified School District has recently established a $13.1 million building for STEM studies.
The STEM Marin Science Program
Novato Unified School District has recently developed a new building to introduce and implement the STEM Marin science program. The building has been built with funds from voter-approved bond measures providing professional STEM learning. The STEM Marin science program offers three tracks–engineering, biotechnology, and comprehensive. The engineering and biotechnology tracks are for science-oriented students and the comprehensive track includes a general curriculum with one science class per year.
This course has been created to allow students to use cross-disciplinary knowledge to solve problems. Science provides an in-depth understanding of research and critical thinking, technology provides experience and prepares to work on high-tech innovations, engineering allows enhancement of problem-solving skills and application of knowledge in new projects, and mathematics enables to analyze information, eliminate errors, and make conscious decisions while designing solutions.
STEM Building
The STEM building has been built on 18,000-square-foot area that includes 10 science classrooms and laboratories. Many other features including a positive pressure clean room, student breakout spaces and an indoor-outdoor workflow model have been added. The building has been designed professionally including set-up of large whiteboards for presentations. This new building will serve as a touchstone for STEM Marin, the school’s magnet science program. The center was completed in September 2020 but is being utilized now for STEM teaching and learning.
