Hempfield High School will hold a STEM summit on Tuesday, Nov. 8, and Wednesday, Nov. 9, in partnership with Junior Achievement of South Central PA (JASCPA). The summit will be held from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. and will provide interactive learning modules for the school's freshmen on biology, chemistry, engineering, manufacturing, mathematics, physics, technology, STEM relay and multiple trades.

The summit relies on volunteers to run its activities; each volunteer will be assigned to one of the nine modules and will receive written instructions and a QR code for a training video. Working in unison, the volunteers at each station will lead their assigned 30-minute activity nine times throughout the day as groups of students rotate through the stations. A STEM background is not required to become a volunteer, and JASCPA encourages those participating to share their personal experiences and career path insights with students. "We don't need everyone to be a biologist or a chemist," said Shannon Baker, vice president of program operations for JASCPA. "Often we're able to show kids that you don't always know what you're doing the first time and that's OK."

Each day, the summit will have over 300 students participating and will require 29 volunteers to operate it. Volunteers are provided from school faculty and members of JASCPA, as well as local residents interested in assisting. The goal of the summit is to introduce students to different aspects of STEM and multiple trades. "The activities are fun. We want kids to get involved and get excited about science," said Baker. "It's not a career fair, and by the end of the day, the volunteers are going to be experts on their topic." Since volunteers will be present for a single day of the event, no clearances are required by the school district for volunteers, but they will be required to follow a code of conduct.

The STEM summit is one of many programs JASCPA offers for free in schools throughout Lancaster, York and Adams counties. Each program is tailored toward a specific age group and tackles a different subject. The Real Life program is a financial literacy course for 11th- and 12th-grade students that provides an opportunity to gain experience creating budgets and navigating real-life scenarios. Another activity offered by JASCPA is the YES program, which educates middle school students on the importance of financial decisions in everyday life. JASCPA offers up to five different events per week throughout the area and requires over 3,000 volunteers each year to operate them. To become a volunteer for the STEM summit at Hempfield, visit https://tinyurl.com/JASCPAsummit. To learn more about JASCPA, visit http://www.jascpa.org.