The 2026 STEM Jubilee

On April 25, 2026, we ran the STEM Jubilee for the second time. From 10 in the morning to 1 in the afternoon, the bonfire field on campus was packed with K-8 kids and their parents going from booth to booth. Free, hands-on, and bigger than year one.

The format stayed the same as the first year. Open-house style, no schedule, no order to anything. Kids walk up to whatever booth catches their eye and dig in. With more than 35 booths to choose from this year, there was no shortage of stuff to try.

Two new things this year

We added a Sensory Space. It's a quiet, low-stimulation room for kids who needed a break from all the noise. The Jubilee gets loud, and we wanted every kid who showed up to actually enjoy it, even if that meant stepping away for a bit.

We also gave out STEM kits this year. Thanks to a grant from Texas Instruments, every kid got one to take home so the science could keep going after they left campus.

What was at the booths

All 35+ booths were run by Rose-Hulman student groups. A handful of the favorites:

• Making invisible ink out of lemon juice and watching the writing show up when you held the paper near heat
• Pulling actual DNA out of strawberries with dish soap and salt
• Building bottle rockets and seeing whose flew the highest
• Building little toy cars and racing them down ramps
• Coding stations for kids who'd never written a line of code
• Civil engineering booths with bridges and towers to design and test
• Rainbow and music science (how light bends, how sound waves work)
• Designing your own harmonica

The day of

The field was busy from the second things kicked off. Goggles on, parents trailing behind with phones out, somebody's slime experiment going way off-script in the corner. Three hours sounds like a lot until you actually try to hit every booth. Most kids didn't get to all of them, and most of them didn't want to leave when it ended.

See you next year

We're already planning the next one. If you want to bring your school, run a booth, or help out in any way, reach out.