Georgia Highlands College (GHC) recently hosted 35 educators from the Paulding County School District to engage in a Science Technology Engineering and Math (STEM) professional development workshop.

The event, held at GHC’s Cartersville site, featured liquid nitrogen demonstrations, chemical reactions and chemistry experiments, DNA activities and demonstrations, bacteria and medical microbiology, concepts on electricity, demonstrations from the health sciences faculty and demonstrations from GHC’s new Building Information Modeling degree and FinTech degrees.

“Because the group of educators in attendance teach across various grade levels, we wanted them to be able to visit the activities they most wanted to learn about,” Interim Dean for GHC’s School of STEM Jason Christian said.

Georgia Highlands College and Paulding County School District have worked together for years to bring visibility to STEM through initiatives such as STEM clubs, STEM family nights and classroom activities.

District STEM Coordinator Sarah Graham said the event made a positive impact on participants and helped show how GHC can provide support to STEM educators.

“GHC professors provided the teachers with hands-on experiences, demonstrating what they could expect from a partnership in the coming year,” Graham said. “Our teachers left ready to collaborate with GHC on their upcoming STEM initiatives.”

Throughout each year, the School of STEM offers professional development opportunities to all K-12 districts in the region, support and participation in STEM related activities and outreach as well as consulting for STEM certification and/or grant writing.