Inaugural NextGen STEMFest coming May 10

The inaugural NextGen STEMFest festival will take place from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. May 10 in and around the Charles River Museum of Industry and Innovation. A quick walk will lead visitors to the Watch City Steampunk Festival, which is scheduled at Waltham Common during similar hours.

STEMFest will offer free STEM — science, technology, engineering and mathematics — programming for all ages funded by the National Science Foundation and its ITEST program in recognition of its 75th anniversary to the exact day.

“One of our goals is to try and get kids thinking about the skills they’re developing as part of an ecosystem skillset,” said lead organizer Mike Barnett, a Waltham resident since 2002 and professor of STEM education and technology in the Lynch School of Education and Human Development at Boston College. “You never know what you might end up doing, so you need a set of skills that cuts across disciplines. And you never know what you’re interested in until you’re exposed to it.” 

There will be five sessions about STEM-related careers, five on-site workshops and more than 20 hands-on activities and demonstrations. 

Barnett expects approximately 10,000 attendees, mostly from eastern Massachusetts, with a Steampunk Festival boost. 

More than 80 similar events are slated around the country, but this is the only one in Massachusetts.

“We didn’t want to just do a ‘hey, come look at our program that we run,’” Barnett said. “We wanted to do something holistic.” 

All workshops require pre-registration. The expected offerings include glass and wood laser engraving led by the Charles River Collaboratory youth group, a session on how to mix epoxy/resin to make objects light up, the basics of 3D printing at the Steampunk Festival and a presentation on automated framing robots. Funded by the National Science Foundation, the youth-led workshops on automatic farming robots include technology and presenters from Massachusetts and Louisiana. 

A full list of exhibitors, which includes universities, tech companies and non-profit science-based organizations, is available on the festival’s website, nextgenstemfest.org. Close to home, Brandeis University’s MakerLab is on the schedule. 

Barnett’s Boston College colleagues Avneet Hira and Helen Zhang are playing key roles, as is longtime STEM educator Joye Thaller from the Charles River Collaboratory. A large contingent of Waltham Public Schools students will serve as youth leaders.  

Barnett’ hopes the festival will foster partnerships among all parties involved. 

“A lot of the students we want to serve don’t have the STEM backgrounds at home to draw upon,” Barnett said. “Hopefully partnerships will abound and relationships will be built.”