Dec 15, 2021 by IDEX Health & Science

For the 2021-2022 school year, we partnered with our IDEX Foundation to donate $29.9K to the Boys & Girls Clubs of Rochester. This donation supports their educational programs with new equipment, software, supplies, additional staff, field trips, and the opportunity for a weekly STEM class with one of our engineers at our Rochester, NY facility.

Our NPI Lead Data Engineer, George Gilmore, has been teaching these STEM classes for the local Boys & Girls Club of Rochester. A typical session for the youth includes the following activities:

• Conversation with the youth to see how they are doing
• Conversation with the youth on their knowledge of the week’s curriculum
• A short video on the topic
• Q&A session
• Interactive activity, as much as possible through Zoom

George has taught the youth about a variety of topics including airplanes- why they fly using a paper airplane example, the job responsibilities of an engineer, introduction to CAD, and much more. Last month, he started a weekly in-person class with the youth (socially distanced of course). The first week of November was a kick-off session to explain how the STEM classes would work and to get to know his students. On week two, the youth watched a video about circuitry and built a basic electric circuit (light bulb with switch) using an electronics kit. George used the video below to explain the key concepts of this topic.

 

In week three, one of our Application Scientists, Michael Odoi, joined George to continue the lessons on basic electronics. Michael and George explored various components from the electronics kit including powering an electric motor to measuring voltage with the youth from the Boys & Girls Clubs of Rochester.

We took a week off to celebrate Thanksgiving, but word is out that our Director of Marketing, Stephanie Snow, will be teaching them how to design logos in Adobe Illustrator this month.

Check back on this blog to see how the logos turn out.