St. Mary of the Mills School in Laurel, Maryland heralded the start of the new school year by celebrating the fact that it has received STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) certification from Cognia Accreditation Services.
The school is the first – and so far, only – Catholic school in The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Washington to earn the prestigious endorsement of the internationally known accreditation service.
Cognia is a non-profit private organization that accredits primary and secondary private and public schools throughout the U.S. and around the world. According to its mission statement, Cognia “identifies schools and systems that best exemplify excellence in education and stand out in their service to learners, based on the results of our rigorous accreditation process.”
“We are incredibly proud to be the first school in this archdiocese to achieve this designation. We are believers in giving power in the hands of our students,” Jennifer Castaneda, the school’s principal, said at an Aug. 29 celebration of the designation.
Noting that the faculty worked for seven years to earn the designation – the initiative was started in 2015 by former principal Tiffany James – Castaneda said the school now offers its students “a STEM education in a fully certified and internationally competitive program.”
St. Mary of the Mill’s STEM program is actually a STEAM program, integrating arts with the other four disciplines. Castaneda said that this year, the school will expand to a STREAM program, incorporating religion into the already expanded curriculum.
To bolster students’ experiences in the internationally recognized STEM program, the school offers two labs complete with computers, 3-D printers, a laser cutter, switchboards, robots and other scientific and creative resources.
Eighth-grader Tristan Black is a regular user of the school’s labs. He said that he uses time there to create computer games and to write computer codes. He said the work “helps me with my math,” and he enjoys working with the technology in the lab. His future plans, he added, “will have something to do with science.”
Sixth-grader Elena Henry spent time recently in the lab making eyeglasses. “I really like working here,” she said.
Right now, STEAM classes are offered to students in the fifth through eighth grades. Later this year, the program will be expanded to include kindergarten through fourth-grade students.
Lauren Casserly, St. Mary of the Mills’ STEAM coordinator and advancement director, said the accreditation shows the school “is dedicated to 21st century Catholic education.” She said obtaining the accreditation required a “rigorous review process that took an entire school year with a thousand pages of documentation.”
“It’s great to be first, and we enjoy the responsibility of leading the pack. We have a really strong community behind us and a group of students who are highly invested (in the program),” she said.
Casserly said the school’s STEM program is “centering on equity-based practices, (and) practical application for students giving them real life practice in the STEM fields, and student ownership of their education.” She said that experiences in the program are “only limited by the imagination of the student body.”
While this is the first year that the school can proudly boast of its Cognia recognition, St. Mary of the Mills has long offered opportunities for its students to explore STEM learning. The school has fielded competitive teams in MathCounts (a middle school competition to get students interested in math), MESA (Mathematics, Engineering, Science Achievement) competitions, and Rube Goldberg engineering competitions, named for a cartoonist known for his drawings of imaginative and humorous contraptions. Recently St. Mary of the Mills’ Rube Goldberg team was named one of the top 10 in the world.
Fourth-grade teacher and assistant coordinator of the STEM program Derrick Harrell noted that the program’s internationally recognized certification shows that St. Mary of the Mills School “carries on a legacy of student creativity and strength.”
“This is a great feeling that I as a former student have been able to see this,” Harrell, an alumnus of the school, said. He added that the STEAM program “gives students the freedom to express their ideas in the different ways they use science, technology, engineering, art and math – whatever is their God-given talent.”
St. Mary of the Mills principal Jennifer Castaneda announces at an Aug. 29 start of school celebration that her school is the first in The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Washington to earn STEM certification from Cognia Accreditation Services. In the background at left is Lauren Casserly, the STEAM coordinator and advancement director at the school, and at right is Father Larry Young, pastor of the parish, who called the announcement of the designation “a very happy day for us.” (Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Washington photo by Gaillard Stohlman)
The school hosted a carnival for students and their families and guests to celebrate the designation, to unveil a new sign signifying the school’s honor and to start off the new school year.
Lincoln Snyder, president and CEO of the National Catholic Educational Association, was among those who joined the school in its celebration. He said that “every year you want people to walk into your school on the first day and you have something new and they say ‘this is really nice.’ In this case, they would say, ‘Wow! This is really, really nice.’”
Father Larry Young, pastor of the parish, called the announcement of the designation “a very happy day for us.”
“We are the only one in the archdiocese (with this designation),” he said. “This is an awesome day, and I am so proud of our school.”
