News and Events | Saturday Academy

Students working with an instructor at a Saturday Academy

Oct 15, 2020

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Tour STEM Careers Online

Are you a high school student thinking of a career in science, technology, engineering, or math (STEM)? Are you curious what skills or education you need, or what it’s like in a day to day setting? Employment in STEM fields, especially healthcare, tech, cybersecurity, and engineering continue to be on the rise. For the last 37 years, Saturday Academy has been there to foster students’ interest in exploring these pathways for their future.

Oct 14, 2020

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Fight Summer Slide in Math Study Groups

Students returning to school in the fall might need more math help than in previous years. Summer learning loss is an ongoing challenge, but due to the sudden witch to online learning this spring, the so-called summer slide may be even more prevalent. The Northwest Evaluation Association (NWEA) research projected “major academic impacts from COVID closures for students, especially in mathematics.”(1)

Oct 1, 2020

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Model U.N. - Learning to See the Interconnectedness of the World

This summer, our Model United Nations camp was converted to an online format due to COVID-19. The class gave students the opportunity to serve as a delegate of one of the 193 member countries in the U.N. Students selected their country and learned to research, negotiate and discuss their country’s interests and risks on climate change policy. Student delegates debated ‘nationally determined contributions’ to adopt at the U.N. Climate Change Conference (UNFCCC COP 26) which will be held in 2021.

ASE interns giving their presentations over Zoom for Saturday Academy's 2020 ASE Symposium

Oct 1, 2020

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Shifting the Stage to the Screen: Moving the ASE Symposium Online

As with so many things, the COVID pandemic led us to re-imagine Saturday Academy’s Apprenticeships in Science & Engineering (ASE) program. Not only were 61 internships converted to an online format, our end of the year symposium was also adapted to the digital environment. Normally, the ASE internship culminates in the ASE Symposium, an end-of-summer gathering where interns, parents, mentors and special guest speakers gather to share the results of the interns’ hard work throughout the summer.

Saturday Academy students working on math problems on a white board

Oct 1, 2020

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Paying Forward a Love of Math

Roger Eiss has been teaching for Saturday Academy for more than 25 years. He was close friends with Saturday Academy co-founder, Gail Whitney, and served on the board of directors. He was always good at math and discovered that there were many aspects of math he had learned on his own that could be learned by doing puzzles. After rotating off the board, he was recruited to teach a Saturday Academy class on recreational mathematics problems, showing students how to solve math problems when they don’t know the methods.