St. John's University
STEP Program Highlights for Fall 2013/2014
Fall 2013/2014 @ St. John's University
The 2013/2014 academic year for STEP at St. John’s
University began on September 21, 2013 with an OPENING BREAKFAST
to which parents, students, siblings and many alumni attended.
The STEP students participated in the St. John’s University:
Eleventh Annual Service Day event held on the following weekend.
This is a significant event within our St. John’s community
that helps connect the St. John’s family to local and
global communities. The day was truly a family affair as parent
and student volunteers had the opportunity of participating
in the sustainability garden, creating cards for children
who are ill in the Make-a-Wish Foundation and preparing the
articles to be given out to the homeless during the University’s
Mid-Night Run.
The theme for this year is Technology: Past, Present, &
Future. STEP
will work on promoting the benefits of technology throughout
time as highlighted in the
topics of aviation, DNA testing and information gathered from
the use of computers. In October, the students had a session
in the St. John’s Physics Lab. The topic was, Uniform
Circular Motion and Centripetal Force. With the advent of
new technologies incorporated into high speed trains, hybrid
cars and planes, the attention of the students is being centered
on the relevancy to careers in the field of engineering. One
of our step students stated, “I enjoyed the physics
lab and found the experiment to be helpful in understanding
the relationship of circular motion and centripetal acceleration.
Working with physics majors from St. Johns I was able to gain
a better insight into how the centripetal force relates to
the real world events.”
On October 5th, a technological and stimulating event into
this year’s theme was
the opportunity to take the STEP students off campus and learn
about the history
of flight at the Cradle of Aviation, Garden City, NY. STEP
students reported the experience as, “Very good; Amazing;
really interesting; I can’t wait to go again.”
A 7th grader really captured the essence of the trip as she
stated, “We were able to learn about different planes
and the terms used such as thrust, jet lag, velocity and best
of all get to enjoy the adventurous ‘make believe’
virtual flight simulator.” Follow up was conducted in
the Literature for Science, Science Inquiry and Mathematical
Inquiry classes the following weeks.
Tutoring is also available during the week to assist the
students with their school work in math and science; regents’
prep, and PSAT/SAT prep.
