Three recipients of the Gamma STEAM Scholarship offered a science workshop at República del Perú Montessori School.
By Institutional Communications
Universidad del Sagrado Corazón’s (Sagrado) commitment to service-led learning took shape during the spring semester through an initiative in which three students receiving the Gamma STEAM Scholarship shared science education experiences with students at República del Perú Montessori School in Santurce.
The experience is part of the institution’s service-led approach to education, through which university education is connected to the needs of the communities surrounding the campus in order to promote active solidarity among students. This initiative was carried out with the support of Dr. Alexandra Colón-Rodríguez, founder of the nonprofit organization STEAM100x35 and donor of the Gamma STEAM Scholarship, who grew up in Santurce near the university. Her familiarity with the school and the community inspired the idea of offering science workshops to students with limited resources.
As part of this initiative, students Adriana Díaz Malavé, Stephanie Morillo, and Ariana Rodríguez Durán delivered a presentation explaining the use of the microscope. To do so, they taught the parts of the microscope alongside the parts of the brain, incorporating a “jelly bean” activity to educate students about the importance of the five senses in distinguishing flavors, explained Ariana Rodríguez Durán, a third-year Biomedical Sciences student with a minor in Pre-Medicine.
“What motivated me most to participate in this initiative was the opportunity to make an impact and bring science education beyond what these students receive at their school,” Rodríguez Durán said.
For the student, it was a challenge to communicate scientific knowledge to a specialized population she was not accustomed to working with, but she expressed satisfaction in seeing the children’s happiness when they successfully completed the activity’s exercises.
“This experience positively impacted my academic journey because, in addition to studying medicine and wanting to become a physiatrist, I would also like to bring talks and workshops to schools about the importance of physical therapy and its impact on high-performance athletes,” the student reflected.
The Gamma STEAM Scholarship, promoted by STEAM100x35 in collaboration with the Sagrado, supports young women in Puerto Rico as they discover their passion for research in Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Mathematics (STEAM).
The initiative carried out by these three students exemplifies how university education can generate a direct impact on communities. This approach is part of Sagrado’s institutional culture, recognized with the Carnegie Community Engagement Classification, a distinction the university has reaffirmed five times and which has made it the only higher education institution in Puerto Rico to hold this recognition since 2008.