October 31, 2018
How does MCLA’s Berkshire Bank STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) Academy
measure its success? Through its students, who go on to earn their degrees, enjoy
outstanding internship opportunities, and secure great jobs in their chosen fields.
Designed for new students who are declared STEM majors, or who have an interest in becoming a STEM major, this five-day, summer program now has completed its sixth year.
Shannon Prouty ’20 of Leicester, Mass. (top), attended STEM Academy the summer of 2017. Now she’s serving an internship in the IT Department at Berkshire Medical Center, in nearby Pittsfield, Mass. Prouty also shadowed a physician’s assistant she met at a STEM Academy roundtable dinner.
Celine Manigbas, ’19, who went on to become a STEM fellow, secured a summer internship at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y., where she worked with the Boyce Thompson Computational Biology Center – a plant research facility – on a bioinformatics-based project.
“My favorite part of the STEM Academy experience was talking with the STEM fellows, who are current MCLA students. Hearing their advice and lessons was valuable,” Manigbas said. “Talking with a STEM fellow helped me gain the courage to pursue computer science and bioinformatics.”
While she’s applying to graduate programs in medical physics, former STEM fellow and participant Phoebe Pelzer ’18 works as an optometric technician at Lahey Hospital & Medical Center, in Burlington, Mass. There, she performs a variety of tasks to assist the optometrist in eye exams and corrective procedures.
STEM Academy participant Daniel Heinen ’18, not only went on to create an educational mobile application that allows students to view 3D anatomy models, he helped start up a virtual reality lab in the Feigenbaum Center for Science Innovation. He now works as a software engineer at Raytheon in Tewksbury, Mass., where he develops technologies similar to those he worked on at MCLA.
