Students and teachers from St. Louis U High gathered in SLUH Commons west for the first ever STEM Night on Thursday, Aug. 15, where they listened to nine rising senior students discuss their lab experiences with some of the top researchers in St. Louis.

The program started off with Daniel Gatewood, Nick Schulze, Bryce Van Bree, Matthew Friedrichs, and Braden Kramer. After a brief cookie break and Q and A, the program concluded with Sirius Song, Dominic Nguyen, Michael Kreinkamp, and David Thuita.

The goal of the night was to give an overview of the students’ lab experience, and put into perspective the significance of this for the SLUH STEM community.

“SLUH excels at STEM programming,” said science teacher Mary Russo, who planned the event. “Maybe we don’t do a very good job at pushing it out to the SLUH community. That was one of the reasons for the STEM night. To Show people the really incredible work that the guys are doing at St. Louis U High.

The nine student presenters, along with two additional students, worked with two different programs.

Students and Teachers as Research Scientists (STARS) is a local program that gets high school risings Seniors different research opportunities  with local scientists from three local universities: St. Louis University, University of Missouri—St. Louis, and Washington University. Nine out of eleven students who conducted scientific research over the summer— and seven of the STEM night presenters—did it through this program.

“It a very hard program to get into,” said Russo. “Now all those kids that completed the program have in their back pocket a full ride to UMSL, books, research of their choice—it’s a pretty impressive opportunity.”

The other program presented was a pilot partnership with SLU Department of Biochemistry.

“We were contacted by Graduate level biochemistry program at SLU by former SLUH parent, Dr. David Ford, “ said Russo. “He talked to us last spring, kinda late in the game, about trying a pilot program where we would send a couple kids over the summer for full time immersion in a research lab at St. Louis U in their graduate school. We had two students do that.”

The presentations spoke to many different scientific interests.

When we were setting up the agenda for the evening it was truly STEM,” said Russo. “There were technology presentations, healthcare, biology, physics, etc. It was really a wonderful evening and very representative of all STEM fields.”

“I felt STEM night really covered the board of all of these different sciences,” said Senior Daniel Gatewood. “We were a little bit biology heavy but I think that’s just because St. Louis is a very big biology research and plant research city, so I think that was just a product of that fact.”

“The turnout meant that the sluh community has so much support for science and for investigation and in particular for just discovering the truth and always asking more questions,” said Gatewood.

The presenters were also impressed with the student turnout.

“The juniors had a great showing. I was impressed with how many juniors came to see our program,” said Gatewood. “I could tell a lot of them were interested in doing science research through the stars program or through the partnership with SLU.”

Two of those juniors were Maurice Safar and Bobby Rizzo.

“I went to STEM night to see if I was interested in doing the stars program. And turns out I thought it was really neat some of the stuff they accomplished over their summer,” said Rizzo.

“It was cool how they took pictures with these professors that are really famous for what they do and they got to work side by side with them,” said Safar.

“Most of the presentations were well made and they thoroughly explained their projects,” said Rizzo. “I think they did a really good job at explaining what they did over the summer.”

The guys from SLUH excelled when they were given the opportunity to pursue their passion in Science.

“Of the 9 guys (From STARS) 5 of them got special research distinctions and awards, more than any other school. There were only 88 students. Most of them are from St. Louis, but I saw kids there from California and New York, so the fact that we had 9 is really wonderful and that 5 of those 9 got research distinctions is amazing, it’s really a testament to this great group,” said Russo. “The head of the pilot at SLU was also very happy with our SLUH boys and they hope to have 3 or 4 next year.”

“It’s clear with students, public speaking is something we could do better with training our students,” said Russo. “But with the right topics and the right passion, the most quiet person can get up on stage and feel the joy of presentation.”