Wheeler Avenue students give college a try

Hilda Cardona’s eyes lit up as soon as the light bulb in front of her did. The Wheeler Avenue School first-grader had just snapped the final piece of her circuit into place during a workshop at Molloy College, a first of its kind for students so young.

“I did it!” Cardona exclaimed. “Look! Look! The light came on!”

She and her class were participating in a series of workshops taught by Molloy College professors and students, hosted at the school’s campus in Rockville Centre. The workshops focused on lessons in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathmatics, or STEM, and were organized by Dr. Manyiu Tse, a mathematics professor at Molloy and father of Julian, a student in Jennifer Bello’s first-grade class at Wheeler.

Tse said Julian inspired the workshops. He loved watching his son’s interest in science and math flourish, thanks to Julian’s experiences spending time at the school. Seeing the impact the lab time had on his son, he wanted to share the lessons with his son’s classmates.

“My son has always really taken an interest in math, and especially in science,” Tse said. “He’s always loved coming down to the college with me and loved when I’ve let him help out with my work or conduct some of his own experiments. I talked to Ms. Bello, his teacher, and we were able to get this workshop together.”

Tse said that though Molloy often welcomes young students to campus for workshops in theater, nursing and business, this was the first such workshop taught by the science or mathematics departments. Bello said the lessons taught at Molloy were designed to line up with the curriculum taught at Wheeler so far this year.

“We’ve really been focusing on the STEM subjects so far during their school year,” Bello said. “We were looking for ways to give them hands-on experiences with those subjects, so when Dr. Tse approached me in November, I was thrilled. We met a few times to brainstorm different ideas and subjects we thought would work well, and we came up with this.”