By Laura Fradin, Education Specialist

With the start of the new semester, the CEEO welcomed STOMP Alum Laura Fradin as the new Education Specialist to work on multiple projects including LEGO Outreach, Novel Engineering, Design and Engineering Workshops, and various research projects. Laura also manages the STOMP program. As the STOMP Manager, Laura has been working hard to hire new STOMP Fellows and schedule times for 43 elementary and middle school classrooms in Boston, Everett, Medford, Malden, Somerville.

STOMP employs 30 engineering students from each engineering department. STOMP has six mechanical engineers, two electrical engineers, five biomedical engineers, four chemical engineers, three environmental engineering, two computer science engineers, two civil engineers, three human factors engineers, and three undecided engineers. Of the 30 engineers, 15 are freshman, six are sophomores, five are juniors, and four are seniors.

STOMP is in 1 kindergarten classroom, 6 third grade classrooms, 16 fourth grade classrooms, 16 fifth grade classrooms, and 4 middle school classrooms.  After hiring 23 new STOMP Fellows. STOMP now has 55 STOMP fellows and 6 STOMP residency program participants. Our recent cohort of new STOMPers is 75% engineers and 71% female. This year the program as a whole is 64% female and 36% male. STOMPer training, which occurred on October 1st, allowed STOMPers to engage in some team building challenges; learn about teaching methodologies, classroom management, and age appropriate practices; and familiarize themselves with technologies like Mindstorms robotics, BlocksCAD, and Scratch coding. STOMPers are now designing and implementing engineering curricula in their classrooms, bringing engineering to roughly 800 elementary and middle school students in the Greater Boston Area!