School News: Week of Dec. 28
Innovative Classroom
Streams Elementary School, in Upper St. Clair School District, received a $1,000 Innovative Classroom Grant from PPG Industries Foundation in support of a STEAM initiative.
The project, spearheaded by art teacher Angela Stevenson and librarian Stephanie Kellner, will provide additional enrichment in science, technology, engineering, art and technology and will enable students to check out “STEAMer Trunks” during inside recess days.
The PPG Industries Foundation’s Innovative Classroom Grants program connects PPG employees in the United States with local public schools to apply for grants up to $1,000 for projects that spark students’ interest in science, technology, engineering and math.
Kristin McCrory-Wise, whose son Alexander is in second grade at Streams Elementary, is an employee at PPG and served as project champion throughout the application process.
The STEAMer Trunk project is an extension of STEAM initiatives that began during the previous school year in collaboration with gifted teacher Mary Quinn.
AMIA Scholar
Upper St. Clair High School junior Kevin Chen was recently selected as an American Medical Informatics Association 2016 High School Scholar, which earned him the opportunity to attend the AMIA 2016 Symposium Nov. 13-15 in Chicago.
In September, Kevin submitted his research paper, “A Comparison of Methods for Identifying Direct Casual Influences,” to the High School Scholars competition. His research evaluated Bayesian network-based causal learning algorithms on biomedical datasets.
Kevin’s submission was admitted for a poster presentation at the AMIA 2016 Symposium. Each submission was reviewed by two members of the High School Scholars Program Review Committee on a variety of criteria including: importance to the field, scholarship, methodological contribution, and overall organization of the presentation.