Anne Gualtieri

Gualtieri’s innovative program, “STEM Up”, is designed to help middle school students develop a connection between engineering, math, science, and technology (STEM). Morris Catholic Junior School is adopting a new STEM curriculum with a hands-on approach to stay up-to-date in the 21^st century. Through the robotics program, students will work in pairs for 12 lab periods once a week to build robots from non-soldering kits. They will follow a sequence of steps and document each step along the way to record challenges, successes and failures, solutions, personal observations, and test results. In addition to the steps, the students will incorporate literacy and problem-solving skills throughout the cross-curricular program to enhance student achievement.  After the participants take digital photos, get measurements of their robots, calculate a logical scale, and graph their results, they will create a three-dimensional model to provide the framework for the project. The program will culminate with a presentation of the data found and discoveries made by the students. Gualtieri, who lives in Ledgewood, hopes the holistic learning experience will increase student engagement and result in the retention of critical science, math, engineering, and technology principles.