Program Details
The Center for Developing Excellence
Enrichment & Access
The Prairie School
The Center for Developing Excellence (CDE) STEM Academy gives students, in grades 5-8, the opportunity to participate in real-world science, technology, engineering, and math lab-based adventures. During the 5-day hands-on course, students design, build, and discover solutions to challenging real world problems. The Academy focuses on improving students’ observation and critical thinking skills, team participation, and problem solving strategies. These skills are are infused into topics such as green chemistry, water sciences, genetics, forensics, aeronautical engineering, computer programming and robotics.
The goal of the Center for Developing Excellence is to keep middle and early high school students excited about potential STEM careers in their future. Their experiences in The Prairie School’s broad STEM curriculum are created to motivate students to pursue advanced science, technology, and math classes throughout their high school years. Students are recruited from public, private, charter and parochial middle schools in the Racine area to provide a program that offers diversity across a wide demographic. Tuition assistance is available to provide the opportunity for any student to attend.