Middle School Participates in STEP

(April 2007) Riverhead Middle School has approximately 15 students who participate in a Saturday program at Suffolk County Community College entitled the Science and Technology Entry Program (STEP). STEP focuses on developing career awareness, basic skills, and real world mathematics, science and technology applications and research for 7th-12th grade students. Recently, a number of those students participated in the STEP Science Fair held at SCCC's Ammerman campus.

Their science projects ranged from an experiment on Tooth Decay by Karla Alvizures to examining the Color in a Leaf by Justin Harris. All of the students from RMS at the Science Fair spoke enthusiastically about the courses that they were taking on Saturday mornings. Two of the students present were in their second year of STEP.

"I'm really enjoying the physics course I'm taking this year," stated Justin. "The teacher is really good and we're learning to measure distances--like how many light years a star is from the earth."

The Science and Technology Entry program (STEP) was established by the Legislature in 1985 to identify historically underrepresented or economically disadvantaged students in grades 7-12 and to prepare them to enter post-secondary degree programs in scientific, technical, and health-related fields. CSTEP, the college level step program, was formed in 1997.

STEP provides high quality Saturday enrichment courses led by college faculty. These courses include: communications, life skills, career awareness, leadership skills, computer applications, mathematics and biology, earth science, engineering, physics and robotics. Students from five school districts participate in this program: Brentwood School District, Central School District, Longwood School District, Riverhead School District and South Country District. CSTEP participants serve as mentors to the STEP participants.

State Education Commissioner Richards Mills said, “New York’s STEP and CSTEP programs are a tremendous asset in statewide efforts to close the achievement gap. Students who might not consider a career in math, science or engineering are getting early support to meet the challenges through STEP and CSTEP.”

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