STEM Minute| Learning engineering skills to pour back into the community

SPRINGFIELD, Ill. (WAND)-- An annual event at Lincoln Land Community College is introducing the idea of a career in a STEM related field to students.

Kids from all around the local area took the time to build their own Robe Goldberg devices with the help of volunteers from successful businesses in the area coming to visit their classrooms. The event was for fifth grade students with the theme of "outlandish machines."

Volunteer Todd Bringuet, the CEO of Ace Sign Company, said, "To see the kids getting animated jumping up and down like they just won a big game its really neat to see them light up and be truly passionate about it."

As one of the volunteers, Bringuet took time out of his busy schedule to help the students make their ideas a reality. His biggest goal is to share a love of STEM education with the students while preparing them to be tomorrow's leaders in the community.

"For the purpose of the success of our community up and coming we need a great pipeline of talented students who know how to solve problems."

The students have been hard at work for months trying to build their devices. That experience making its mark as they take pride in demonstrating their work and the skills they had learned during competition. The most important skills learned were problem solving, perseverance, and basic engineering concepts.

Emmett, a 5th grade student, said, "I just like the fact that we can have fun and that's really cool and just have fun exploring and stuff."

Each of the devices was built from scratch and decorated by their respective teams. The students and volunteers hard work paid off as they were able to show that their inventions worked while letting their creativity shine.

"Seeing students that were a part of the program go through further education go through college and come back into our community to be an engineer and put those skill sets to work here locally. Thats incredible."

This is a growing tradition in the Springfield community, with this being the 18th year that the event was hosted by Lincoln Land Community College.