Ellis Seniors Partner with VA Hospital
Science, technology, medicine, and music? Seniors, Katie Brandegee and Pallavi Muluk are fusing together their creative passions and intellectual pursuits into their final senior project. Katie and Pallavi are partnering with the VA Pittsburgh Healthcare System at their H.J. Heinz Campus in Aspinwall to organize a variety show for veterans, employees, family, and friends.
The end of the year showcase is still in the planning stages, but Katie and Pallavi are diligently working to highlight the men and women who dedicated their lives to service. Katie’s love for science and engineering pairs perfectly with Pallavi’s passion for music and medicine as they merge their interests to not only plan the show, but produce a video for the veterans and create emblems of service to honor their tours abroad.
Katie took the lead on the making aspect as she used a TechShop membership provided by Ellis and her STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, and Math) skills to create over 200 emblems of service for the veterans in honor of Salute Week. Katie prepared the designs, materials, and plans for the dog-tag sized medallions, and then utilized the laser cutter at TechShop to fabricate them.
Katie says, “taking Senior Studio at Ellis really helped with the planning and visualization of the emblems. It is a lot of troubleshooting, testing, and trial and error with the laser cutter since you have to be so precise geometrically. Merging science and technology with creativity is what I like most about working at TechShop. You can really make anything you dream up.”
The service-specific emblems were passed out at a special Salute Week service at the H.J. Heinz VA campus last week. This year marks the 40th annual observance of the VA’s National Salute to Veteran Patients where veterans are honored with entertainment, cards, visits, and Valentine’s in honor of their service.
What’s next for Katie and Pallavi’s senior project? Well, they plan to finalize details for their showcase, interview veterans for their video, and create thank you cards at TechShop for the veterans. This cross-disciplinary mindset allows them to integrate typically siloed subjects and meld them together for an unforgettable, invaluable senior experience for themselves and local veterans.
By completing senior projects, students garner a meaningful understanding of educational material via relevant, real-world applications. When skills are fostered outside of the classroom, students develop multifaceted expertise and grasp the important role interrelationships can play in real-world problem solving. Ellis girls don’t just absorb the material they learn in school, they synthesize, competently apply it to sophisticated issues, and exhibit it throughout their entire lives.
We know girls learn best when their learning experiences are experiential, interdisciplinary, and community based, and when their course work allows them to pursue interests that are meaningful to them. At Ellis, girls are empowered and supported while dreaming big, taking risks, and being their authentic selves. A happy byproduct of this approach, which is often coupled with project-based learning, is that it makes school more interesting and productive for students.
Learn more about the Senior Experience at Ellis here.
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