Letter to the Editor: enthusiastic support for Shoreline STEM Festival

Five students from Spokane at
competition in Phoenix

To the Editor:

A recent request for volunteers for the upcoming Shoreline STEM Festival was seen in the SAN. (STEM festival is ready for volunteers)

Even though I now live some 300 miles away on the other side of the state, I wanted to express my total and unequivocal support for the event and its continuation. For simply one major reason. It is, or at least should be, a wide-open door for students of Shoreline leading possibly to a wonderful, bountiful, life-enhancing career in science, technology, engineering or math.

Over here in Spokane, the Eastern Washington Regional Science and Engineering Fair (ewrsef.org) is entering its fourth year. We are anticipating over 250 grade 6-12 projects and 300 students (because of team projects) next March 18. From 25 schools and 18-20 teachers. Our top four projects will win 6-day, all-expenses paid trips to the International Science and Engineering Fair during May 2020 in Anaheim CA. They will compete against, and maybe more importantly meet and get to know, 1,800 high school students from 80 countries and regions. If that is not life-altering in a positive sense for a student, I simply don’t know what else is.

Some 40 students from eastern Washington will travel with teachers and projects to the Washington State Fair in Bremerton next March 27 and 28. For over a million dollars in prizes and scholarships. While it is 600 miles round-trip for us, students from Shoreline could take part in that with a ferry ride across the Puget Sound.

I hope the Shoreline STEM Festival will continue to expand and develop for the sake of the grade K-12 students of Shoreline.

Ray Koelling, Spokane 

(formerly of Lake Forest Park)