Pi Day adds up to be a fun and enriching experience for STEM clubs and students

The three-hour event featured plenty of games and activities to get attendees interested in robotics, engineering and other technical fields.

By: Daimler Koch and Eva Larrabee, Staff Writers

Pi Day held at Monarch Hall on Mar. 10. Valley College and local high school students were among the attendees. More than 30 tables were set up from different businesses and clubs. (Angel Rangel for the Valley Star)

Pizzas, toy car races and quantum computing formed an unlikely trio at Valley College’s annual Pi Day event on Mar. 10, where 500 visitors and 40 vendors gathered to celebrate science and math at Monarch Hall. 

This was the third annual Pi Day event co-sponsored by MESA and other STEM programs on campus, lasting from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. It was attended by college, high school and middle school students, and incorporated activities from different areas of STEM like robotics, microscopy and video game development. 

The goal of the event was to give visitors the opportunity to participate in these areas hands-on, according to Professor Pamela Byrd-Williams, director of the MESA Center and the person in charge of the event.

“My idea was to make it as hands-on as possible because it's cool to see things, but it's more fun to touch… so I'm hoping it’s an opportunity for students to see and do things that they would've never thought about.” 

Monarch Hall was abuzz with energy, as visitors mingled with the vendors, competed in games and activities, all while munching on pizza and pie.

A variety of campus STEM programs showed up, like Electronics, Manufacturing and Cybersecurity. Other supporting student services such as the Veteran Resource Center and Rainbow Pride Center also attended. Outside companies and organizations like the Natural History Museum and the Griffith Observatory Foundation used this opportunity to promote their products and missions.

Other community colleges and universities like City College and CSUN came to present their own STEM programs. City College promoted HACKMESA, a 24 hour statewide competition featuring multiple community colleges to build software and hardware solutions. CSUN’s program that featured prosthetics impressed visitors with a robotic arm. 

Student Ayalette Bernal said “The prosthetic arm looks really cool, it was my favorite to look at” when asked about her favorite booth at the event. 

There were plenty of activities that kept people engaged with what the booths had to offer. MESA hosted an outdoor wooden car race that rewarded students with small prizes like Rubik’s cubes and a grand prize of a Lamborghini RC car. 

Valley’s Electronics program helped students build small chirpers, devices that would make a high-pitched sound, as a way to allow people to experience building circuits and have fun with electronics. Throughout the event, participants collected stickers from each booth they talked to, with the reward being a slice of pizza and pie, if enough stickers were obtained. 

The event also featured guest speakers from the STEM industry. Andrew Baczweski, a computing quantum physicist, and Sandra Grigoletti, a sales director for robotic engineering, gave introductions to their work, as well as answered questions from the crowd. 

Students with all kinds of different majors, such as mathematics, economics and environmental engineering, attended. Many of these students used Pi Day as an opportunity to further discover future career paths.

“It’s engaging, it's entertaining and it’s a cool way to get opportunities,” said prospective student Zane Gavin, who discovered the event through posters placed around campus.  

Pi Day featured a variety of STEM-related activities and opportunities as students were able to interact with experts in their fields. As the event closes on its third annual year, Valley College is likely to expect another celebration of all things Pi in the future.