MCC Economic & Workforce Development Center: Impact Report 2015-17

2016 Xerox STEM Summer Program Report

Students get hands-on EXPERIENCE during STEM Week.

Last July, a group of 9th and 10th graders spent five days on the MCC Brighton campus with information and computer technologies program faculty and staff. They explored Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) applications, courses and career pathways. The program was designed to ignite a passion for tech studies and push boundaries.

This summer the STEM Summer Program introduced P-TECH (Pathways in Technology Early College High School) students to STEM and cybersecurity topics:

A hands-on cybersecurity simulation, mimicking a hack, was followed by a discussion of data protection strategies. Students designed and built robots—taking home kits to continue their experiments. Discussed networking, the origins of the Internet, and the benefits and dangers of social media.

“Coding for Beginners” Students coded, debugged and ran programs in Python. “Careers in Cybersecurity, Network and Cloud Computing” were discussed.

Impact: 5-days of intensive cybersecurity education, including career pathway discussion, provided to Rochester P-TECH students to guide them on their journey to careers in information technology.

Hospitality Management Program Student-run restaurant—Food for Thought—for career hungry students. MCC hospitality management program’s student-run restaurant, Food for Thought is an instructional laboratory for FSA 203 Culinary Arts II: Advanced Food Preparation, and HSP 102 Hospitality Service students. This is a place to learn the culinary arts—from menu to table, from server to management. The student staffers work and run the restaurant under the supervision of course instructors. They serve customers from MCC (faculty, staff and students) as well as outside customers.

Impact: This real-life experience and pressure gives students the opportunity to hone their skills, and apply what they’ve learned in their cooking and hospitality classes.

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