It is not every day that vastly different professionals from five different fields are all gathered in one place, but for this upcoming STEAM day, this is exactly what will be happening. On March 14th, during all lunch periods, there will be an opportunity for all students to learn about possible careers from professionals in their fields.

“It’s really important for students to make connections,” Julie Bryniczka, math department chair and one of the event coordinators, said. “We hear the word ‘STEAM’ all the time, but this [event] could actually help students make connections with potential careers they could pursue or even introduce them to other careers that are out there that they may have not even heard of before.”

Just like the last three years, this event brings in professionals from the community who have careers in STEAM, and Bryniczka says will spend “twenty to thirty minutes talking about their career, the education that brought them there, what they love about their job.” Afterwards, students will have the opportunities to ask questions.

While the format of the event will stay the same, Bryniczka says there is one important detail that will be different about this year’s STEAM day. Out of the presenters this year, one of them is an LZ alum and the other three are parents of LZ students.

For Andrea Tyson, senior, who has gone to STEAM day for the past three years, the connection that this year’s event has with community members is especially exciting.

“This year, my dad’s actually doing a presentation, so I’m going to get to hear a little bit more about what he does everyday and how he’s involved [with] STEAM in his life in a different way that I would hear from him normally,” Tyson said. “I think it’s just really cool to see that connection between people you interact with in everyday life and then the careers that they have and can teach you about.”

But while this is the first year that Tyson has had a personal connection to one of the speakers, she says that for every year that she has gone to a STEAM day presentation, she has learned something new.

“You can’t pursue a career that you don’t know about, so it’s just good to have that exposure [that STEAM day gives],” Tyson said, “I’ve gone to a variety of different ones.  I’ve seen a chemist, an architect, and an actuary, and those were not things I would have been super interested in normally, but since they were there, I went and listened to the presentation and it was really informative.”

With another wide variety of careers coming directly to present to the students, Bryniczka says this event “opens up so many opportunities to new contacts and opens up [students’s] eyes to careers that they’ve never thought about before.”

Pizza and a cookie will be served to all who sign up, and there will be no FAME that day.