A STEAM Carnival attendee enjoys the physics of a square bubble blowing device.
Asked why she wanted to be a scientist one day, seven-year-old Jacqueline Contreras said: “Because they’re cool and all the science that explodes? It just blows my mind.”
Contreras was among more than 2,000 kids and their parents who attended CI’s first-ever STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art and Mathematics) Carnival, held at the University’s Central Mall in March.
The STEAM Carnival evolved from the Science Carnival, launched in 2009 by Professor of Chemistry and Acting Dean of the School of Arts & Sciences, Phil Hampton.
Hampton planned the carnival to interest kids in pre-K through grade 8 in STEM disciplines (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics), showing them and their families how fun STEM studies and careers can be.
The STEAM Carnival brought together local students, from pre-K to eighth grade and
72 exhibits from anthropology to physics, chemistry, biology and archeology.
“I started doing the Science Carnival because I just wanted a time when families could come and enjoy the love of science and have fun with it,” Hampton said. “So many of our schools are under-resourced and unable to provide STEM science programming.”
The first Science Carnival consisted of about 40 CI students running 30 activities for a crowd of about 250. The carnival kept growing, eventually moving to Rio Vista Middle School in Oxnard, where it was held from 2012 until the last carnival before the pandemic in 2020.
“We had one virtual event in 2021, but we haven’t been in-person until now,” said Hampton, wearing his STEAM Carnival Wizard hat. “One of the biggest changes to the event has been the addition of the letter ‘A’ – from STEM to STEAM – which I consider a long ‘A’ representing ‘Anything Else,’ including the Arts, Humanities, Social Sciences, Education, etc.”
The STEAM Carnival featured 72 exhibits for all ages, including an anthropology exhibit in which kids were transfixed, watching Marcus Eriksen from Leap Lab in Ventura carefully glue together fragments of a triceratops horn found in Wyoming last summer.
Another child lifted a tiny shell from a hands-on shell display and put it up to his ear to hear the ocean. Toddlers banged on hanging pots and pans for a fundamental lesson in sound, and other children experimented with basic principles of physics by creating giant bubbles through cubes of various shapes.
A Health Science booth enabled young guests to perform CPR on a dummy, while at a
booth next door, there was a long line to dissect pig lungs, cow eyeballs, and sheep’s
hearts.
Besides adding arts and humanities to the STEAM Carnival, campus tours were available, and a “Photograph Your Future” booth was set up where kids could dress up in lab coats, graduation gowns, and other career costumes and get a Polaroid photo taken of themselves to imagine what they could be with a college degree.
“Ever since 2009, I wanted a night where families could experience the wonder and amazement behind science,” Hampton said. “Now, I want them to see the University, too, and picture themselves here someday.”