Valley Middle School students built robots at UND's BrainSTEM day

Valley Middle School students spent Thursday, October 15, in University of North Dakota labs for BrainSTEM, the Grand Forks Herald reported on October 19, 2026. Dozens of them made slime, built airfoils, constructed spaghetti bridges, and assembled robots meant to clean solar panels. It was the third year the event has been held at UND.

Alexa Ducioame, a civil engineer who organized the day, said the aim is to show that anybody can be in STEM and to make the field more welcoming once students are in it. The same kind of day has run for nearly a decade in the Fargo-Moorhead area, and each one gives priority to public schools with more students from economically disadvantaged backgrounds. Maddalene Gunthrie, an undergraduate working with the North Dakota Space Grant Consortium, said children often do not know which careers exist until someone puts the tools in front of them. Sponsors include the Dakota Science Center, Moore Engineering, and Microsoft, along with several UND colleges. The Herald also noted the region's push for more pilots and aviation workers. The students' day itself was the labs: bridges, wings, slime, and robots.