Picking up STEAM
August 28, 2025
This summer, Xavier hosted 26 students from around the world at STEAM@XU, a one-week research immersion day camp for high school students. Participants included local students, regional students, and even an international student from the UK!At this camp, students explored Xavier through activities around campus in the mornings and small group research projects with Xavier faculty in the afternoon. You may have seen them around campus as they did exercise science experiments in the HUB, made robot obstacle courses in the Library Makerspace, recorded green screen videos in the Digital Media Lab, talked basketball statistics in Cintas, and learned about the college experience with a student panel in Gallagher. In the afternoons, campers worked on original research projects in small groups with CAS faculty members, including modeling fungal networks, analyzing The Lord of the Rings, studying green roofs, and more! At the end of the week, faculty, students, and parents came together for a poster session highlighting the work the campers had done on their research projects. Everyone was impressed with what these talented students were able to accomplish in only a week!
The students had great things to say about their experience, including “[the most exciting or memorable part was] spending direct and specialized time with an AMAZING professor, meeting new people, and leaning tons of new things”. Another expressed how she was able to explore a new discipline, saying “With Dr. Yandell, I learned about the arts aspect of STEAM research because I didn't know how it worked…I know what math research and science research looks like, but I had no idea what English research was.” Importantly, the experience exposed all these students to the wonderful things Xavier has to offer, with one student even saying “The culture and success of Xavier students increased my interest in the University.”
We are excited to continue our work on this camp and believe it can be a real asset for recruitment as we highlight what makes Xavier so special. We are grateful for the many wonderful folks across the College and University who helped to make STEAM@XU a success, and we hope that some of you will consider participating in future years as the program continues to grow!
Dr. Kelly Crowe
Associate Professor, Biology
Dr. Hanna Wetzel
Associate Professor, Biology