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Salvadori Center outlines hands-on STEAM programs in Wyoming Valley West schools
Summary
Teresa Taylor of the Salvadori Center told the Wyoming Valley West board the program provides project-based STEAM lessons about the built environment and said the Center served roughly 12,000 students across 188 sites in 2024–25; the District participated in skyscraper and bridge programs funded by local foundations.
Teresa Taylor, STEAM program manager for the Salvadori Center, told the Wyoming Valley West School District board on June 3 that the Center’s hands-on, built-environment curriculum gives students real-world problems to solve and builds teamwork and confidence. She said Salvadori, founded by Mario Salvadori and established in Pennsylvania in 2016, served about 12,000 students at 188 sites across New York City and Pennsylvania in 2024–25 and that independent assessments show routine gains in student comprehension—“about 80% most of the time,” she said.
Taylor described two programs piloted in the district this year: a high-school “skyscrapers” unit that taught scale, floor plans and structural concepts, and a middle-school bridges unit where students designed, built and load-tested truss bridges. She said partners and funders for the Pennsylvania work include the William G. McGowan Charitable Fund, the Scranton Area Community Foundation and the Hurst Foundation, and that the partnership with Wyoming Valley West expanded from two districts to nine in the region.
Board members thanked Taylor and district staff for arranging the partnership. Taylor said the Center provides teacher-facing curricula and independent assessments to measure changes in students’ attitudes toward STEM and potential postsecondary pathways. She closed by expressing eagerness to continue programs in after-school, summer and family-workshop formats.
