The St. Vrain Valley School District board climbed aboard the Mobile Innovation Lab for their workshop Wednesday before seeing some of the impressive work going on at the Innovation Center.
“We go above and beyond at the Innovation Center, so we want you all to actually have the participation experience,” explained Patty Quinones, assistant superintendent of innovation, as part of the center’s update to the school board.
Outside the mobile lab, St. Vrain students and staff demonstrated the work involving the wind-resistant drones they’ve built, robot programs they’re developing to help children with special needs, sensors they’ve created to track underwater data, businesses they’re launching, and more.
St. Vrain’s Innovation Center offers extended coursework, partnerships, work-based learning and extracurricular activities to students while diffusing innovation through the district.
Eric Berngen, coordinator of innovation, said the Innovation Center has seen a 400% growth in enrollment over the last four years. This year, the center is providing professional certifications to 725 students and employing more than 200 to do real industry work.
Axel Reitzig, director of innovation, explained how the Innovation Center also works to spread innovative practice across the district.
“If you will, we’re kind of a sandbox for the district to explore and experiment with those next steps of education,” he said.
The Innovation Center brings the Mobile Innovation Lab to different schools to give younger students first hand experience with the work they’re doing, along with welcoming tours at the center itself. The Lab so far this year has had over 80 events.
To board member Richard Martyr, the mobile lab is also a way to draw in students to the areas that the Innovation Center focuses on that might not normally get that exposure.
“My hope is that as our programs get more and more popular, we would be intentional about making sure that those populations that have more difficulty in our traditional classes have an opportunity to get this experience,” Martyr said.
Quinones said the Innovation Center has been working hard to bring students who are typically underrepresented in these areas, especially girls and minority groups.
There are some barriers to extending that reach, the biggest one being transportation. Reitzig explained that because of the geographical size of the district, it’s harder for some feeder systems to get to the Innovation Center.
The Innovation Center also hosts summer camps and other activities to get students interested in the programming it offers.
Quinones added that the Innovation Center sees visitors from all over the country and world interested in replicating the success of the program.
“When I see all these innovation centers popping up across the country, I know that’s St. Vrain,” she said.
The school board was impressed with all of the work at the Innovation Center, and the Innovation Center staff in turn thanked the board for their support to move forward with such boundary-pushing work.
“We have a collaboration and a working dynamic that allows us to do this work,” Quinones said. “… We all appreciate how much you understand how important this is and how vital it is to be agile and flexible and allow kids to really experience this.”
