STEM Family Day returns for fifth year

GREEN BAY – The Einstein Project will host its STEM Family Day on its fifth anniversary. It is a partnership between UW-Green Bay and Brown County.

“What we do is work with a bunch of UW Green Bay student organizations, faculty, staff, plus Brown County,” Jacob Depas, director of development of the Einstein Project, said. “[The] 4-H Land and Water Conservation and Brown County Extension, too, and we put on a full day of hands-on fun for all ages. We’ve also partnered with close to 30 other nonprofits and community groups to put this on.”

The Einstein Project will be a four-hour event with around 1,500 participants this year.

This event is very well known, for some families will come for an hour or two, while others will be lined up at the door from 9:45 a.m. to 2 p.m.

The project will be packed with hands-on activities that will partner with the engineering school. They are even expecting to launch some rockets throughout the day.

“The variety between almost 40 hands-on activities is really going to range depending on your age and your skill level with different STEM activities, but it can be as simple as building a paper airplane and measuring how far you’re able to throw it. It can get as advanced as building your own model rocket and launching it the day of the event,” Depas said. “Master Gardeners have been part of this [event], and have made kids go through their own potting soil, pick out their plant, bring it home with them and then send us pictures of them putting it in their at-home garden.”

The STEM Family Day started after the UW-Green Bay Engineering Club’s student president approached the college and asked if they could raise some funds so their engineering club could do some activities.

One of the requests was a 5k run, but the college offered to host a community event instead. The community that the student president created exceeded expectations, where they brought kids of all ages and engaged them in various hands-on activities.

“And what’s cool about that is our first year was really the year after covid restrictions were lifted, so we had close to 89 to 100 people. And now it’s grown ever since,” Depas said. “So this has been a student-led initiative, and we, UW-Green Bay, just provide the guardrails, make sure everything’s done properly.”

“We really focused on the three partners of Brown County, UW Green Bay, and the Einstein Project, but now, how we’ve really evolved and expanded, is by including other non-youth-serving nonprofit and community organizations,” Depas said. “We’ll have the Boys and Girls Club Children’s Museum, the Maritime Museum, Girl Scouts and a model airplane. We’ll have the National Railroad Museum, Master Gardener and so on.”

These other nonprofit community organizations have stepped up to really make the Einstein Project a collective effort to impact the community. The variety of activities expanded in the five years isn’t just what the project is. They are also reaching different parts of the community for people interested in STEM through the Boys and Girls Club, resulting in a broader view of what STEM really needs, making it more accessible and approachable. The improvement shown by the Einstein Project might be small because the project is still relatively new, but in four or five years, Depas can see some of those kids going to school at UW-Green Bay in any STEM majors.

“I think one of the coolest things, and one thing that we’re going to plan on highlighting the day of the event, is that one of Einstein’s project interns, Ellie, was a UW-Green Bay engineering graduate, and she was just on the team that was part of the Artemis project,” Depas said. “She was part of this event for the first two years of this event. Now that she has graduated and can share that she’s now working with NASA, it’s pretty awesome.”

The Einstein Project started in 1991 and has expanded throughout the state. Depas thinks the number one thing that this event is all about is access. It’s a completely free event, thanks to the incredible sponsors. Not only are the participants engaging in incredible activities, but a lot of those activities are bringing fun things home.

Depas said that this event defines who they are and what they are trying to do. They are trying to make STEM accessible to everyone so that every kid grows up thinking of STEM as a possibility for them.

“We don’t want any door to be closed, especially to minds that have so many opportunities for them moving forward,” he said.

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