Michigan Technological University in Houghton developed Mind Trekkers 2 1/2 years ago, but has been doing hands-on activities through its Center for Pre-College Outreach since 1972, according to Director Stephen H. Patchin.
Until fog interfered, 500 high school seniors with strong interests in STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) were to converge on Southwestern Michigan College in two half-day groups.
Mathews Conference Center was filled with a carnival of fun activities demonstrating complex principles, including life-size bubbles, shooting smoke rings, static electricity, the science of hockey slap shots, wading in oobleck, getting shrink-wrapped (“it feels like a hug”) and self-adjusting silicone eyeglasses which make Third World children look like Harry Potter, all set to a rock beat by The Killers, The Beatles, Smashmouth, AC/DC and Bachman-Turner Overdrive.
BTO seems particularly appropriate because when Patchin and his Michigan Tech midway barkers are Taking Care of Business, You Ain’t Seen Nothin’ Yet.
Andrew Dohm, math/science instructor, coordinated the event for SMC, which wants to nudge potential students with the message the college is a great STEM launching pad.
“Kids today want to touch it, they don’t want to listen to a lecture or watch a PowerPoint,” Patchin said. “We had a lot of requests from teachers and community members, but we’re way up in the UP, a million miles away from anybody, so we started to put these activities together” and take them on the road.
“The first event we did was for the Boy Scouts,” Patchin said. That would be the national Jamboree in Virginia every four years — for 42,000 Scouts.
“They put us in a 40-by-60 tent for eight days in August. It was about 110 degrees heat index every day,” he said. “That’s more people than there are in the whole Keweenaw” Peninsula, the most northern tip of Michigan. “We went through 890 liters of liquid nitrogen doing stuff like you see here. The Scouts dipped their bills in it and they were so cold it made a fog that cooled them off.”
It is difficult to measure the effectiveness of what the National Science Foundation calls “informal science education” because it is “abstract,” but they follow up with participant and teacher surveys, like four shows in four days last May in Traverse City, Lake Superior State University, Iron Mountain and Escanaba for 2,000 students  each. “They had a fantastic time,” so they followed with more feedback in the fall and found “they were still talking about it. Teachers tell us it’s effective.”
Those testimonials could be shared with Midwest Energy Cooperative in Cassopolis as it considered signing on as a sponsor.
Yellow-shirted Tech guides are part of a student organization which not only travels with the carnival, they help create its activities, including online lesson plans, and conduct trial runs. They are not paid except a “travel stipend” for food and lodging.
“We’ve been to Jackson and at the Detroit Science Center,” Patchin said. “This is the farthest southwest we’ve been. We’re over 300 members now and hope to get up to 1,000, which would be 15 percent. Our next event” is a two-day science festival in Washington, D.C.
“We go across a lot of different departments. Nobody I know uses music and video like we do. We just wrote and submitted an NSF (National Science Foundation) grant  for $3 million over four years which would take us to community colleges in rural areas to get students excited. (SMC) is in that grant, so we would be down here every other year.
“When they walk by and look, but don’t do anything, our guys — my carnies — are very good at pulling them in. With the music, once they try something, their inhibitions drop and, all of a sudden, they’re engaged. Then they don’t want to leave. I used to teach. I call it ’tricking them into learning.’ They think they’re having a good time, but when they walk out, they have all this knowledge they don’t know how they got. I have the coolest job in the world, getting kids excited about learning with no boundaries. They let us go wherever we need.”