For years, the Needham Elementary School fourth grader has loved to study STEM subjects.
When he was a toddler, Abram Botkin would try and study how rides at the fair worked. And at school, he is a regular on the school’s math and science bowls. He builds models for 4-H and also shows sheep. He wants to study engineering at Purdue University.
This summer, he will be immersed in STEM after he was selected to attend a STEM camp with other students from across the country.
Botkin has been selected to attend the National Youth Leadership Forum: Pathways to STEM. He will spend six days at Loyola University in Chicago learning how to build and program a robot, dissecting a beef heart and learning forensics.
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Every elementary aged student selected to attend the program was nominated by one of their educators and then picked to attend the program, according to a news release.
Botkin is a natural at STEM subjects, Rebecca McCain, a STEM educator at the school, said.
During STEM lessons, Botkin can look at each situation and find three or four quick solutions and he takes the time try out each idea and improve them, McCain said.
Those qualities are part of why she nominated him to participate in the program, she said.
"His ability to see the problem from multiple points of view increases his productivity and success in each activity. These qualities are the backbone of STEM and Abram is a natural," McCain said.
STEM principles have interested Botkin since he was a toddler, said his mother, Tai Botkin.
"He has always been an inquisitive kiddo," she said.
Teachers told his parents that he had a knack for STEM like subjects and Tai Botkin encouraged her son to join the school’s science and math bowls to go along with the sports he played, she said.
Botkin enjoys seeing how things work and how to build things and has especially enjoyed STEM lessons involving catapults and building airplanes. Math is also one of his favorite subjects, he said.
"I like the engineering part, mostly because I get to build stuff," he said. "I think it’s fun to divide and multiply."
At the camp, Botkin will stay in dormitories at the school with peers in his age group and they will have the chance to do STEM all day every day for nearly a week, Tai Botkin said.
Students at the camp will have a chance to dissect a beef heart, build a robot and work on forensics techniques such as fingerprint analysis. The planned activities of the camp are part of the reason Botkin was excited to attend.
"I was really excited; I saw a bunch of activities I thought I would really like to do," he said.
