Company inspires future scientists at STEM Fair

STATE COLLEGE — An auditorium full of middle schoolers may seem like a tough audience for teaching new scientific concepts, but in Restek’s experience, they are quite attentive and engaged. And, employees at Restek enjoy taking the opportunity to share their knowledge with area youth.

“I could go through a slide show presentation, but something tells me you wouldn’t be that interested in it. So, I’m going to get you involved and teach you through action,” Scott Grossman, a content development specialist at Restek, told an auditorium of more than 200 students in April.

Grossman, along with colleagues Samantha Harter, Fang-Yun Lo and Titus Morehead, visited Park Forest Middle School to present during the school’s STEM Fair. The annual event encourages student involvement and future careers in science, technology, engineering and math.

“We keep inviting Restek back because their presentation is high quality and they do a good job at communicating what they do at an appropriate level for the students,” said Mike Bierly, an eighth-grade science teacher at Park Forest.

For years, teams at Restek have presented a variety of interactive performances to elementary and middle school students about chromatography. This year’s presentation taught it by comparing it to a party.

The presenters invited dozens of students on stage to create a party atmosphere that would function like a chromatography column’s stationary phase. Then, other students passed through the party. Some were instructed offstage to interact extensively with other partygoers, while others had been told to interact very little and “elute” quickly, ignoring the party and passing straight to the food table. As students reached the food table, “peaks” in an illustrative chromatogram were generated.

Grossman explained that analyzing these different types of partygoers is very similar to how chemists use chromatography to analyze the contents of liquid and gas samples. Compounds interact with the column’s stationary phase to different degrees, allowing them to be separated and, ultimately, identified.

“It’s fun to see the students engage and start to understand the concepts,” said Harter, a process engineer at Restek.

Lori Dundon, a Restek marketing communications manager, kick-started Restek’s engagement with local elementary and middle schools in Central Pennsylvania years ago when her kids were attending Park Forest Middle School.

“I wanted my kids to understand what I do for work,” she said.

Grossman took on the challenge of developing a presentation and has, since then, offered it and others to many local schools and thousands of future scientists.

“It’s like I always tell the students — it doesn’t matter what you end up doing in your career, you need to be a good communicator,” he said.