Edgerton Center hosts workshop for deaf high school students in STEM
When instructor Amanda Gruhl Mayer ’99, PhD ’08 discovered that deaf students have limited access to STEM, she dedicated the next four years of her career to addressing this issue.
The percentage of deaf and hard-of-hearing individuals who have bachelor’s degrees is 15.2 percent lower than their hearing counterparts, and for those who do have degrees, most are in business and education. Deaf adults with degrees in STEM fields are few and far between. MIT Edgerton Center instructor Amanda Gruhl Mayer ’99, PhD ’08 has set out to bridge this gap by piloting a new MIT workshop called STEAMED (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, and Math Experience for Deaf and hard-of-hearing students).
The workshop tasked students with building an underwater remotely operated vehicle (ROV), teaching them new skills to build circuits, motors, and frames. At the end of the course, students tested their robots at the Z Center pool. Gruhl Mayer worked with Brian Gibson, a science teacher at Horace Mann School for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing; Edgerton Center instructors Chris Mayer and Christian Cardozo ’18; and MIT student mentors rising senior Ryn Moore and Ruben Castro ’24. With several instructors and mentors at varying levels of American Sign Language (ASL) fluency, ASL interpreters strengthened communication between all participants.
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