Community Corner
Immaculate’s Focus on STEM Sets Students Up for Success
Science, Technology, Engineering, Math and Business Classes are on Cutting Edge.
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If you happened to walk by Room 311 at Immaculate High School last semester, you may have thought you were on a University of Connecticut campus.
“So what we’re going to do is that we’re going to have this start spinning, we’re going to record its rotations, then we are going to add on the weight and see how that ends up changing it,” Aiden Doolabh ‘23 of Danbury explained, as he dropped a disc on a rotating platform and then tracked its movements on an electronic device nearby.
The experiment in this AP Physics dual-enrollment class tested the conservation of momentum – and the high-tech data collection equipment was acquired by Immaculate through an $11,000 Foundations in Education grant. Teacher Anthony D’Ausilio’s proposal, Integrate Real World Data Collection and Analysis into Physics Labs, allowed the Science Department to upgrade lab equipment with Bluetooth-based sensors in 2022 that will be used in classes at all levels.
“We never had devices which were able to directly capture the data for the rotational velocity,” said Doolabh, who went on to study at Waseda University in Tokyo, Japan this year. “So it makes it a lot easier to have the straight input data which then allows us to do the calculations and see if the math actually ends up working out.”
Simply put, D’Ausilio said, “This technology proves that physics works! This is just one of about 25 experiments that we are able to do now with the award.”
He isn’t the only one at Immaculate to receive a Foundations in Education grant. This year, science teacher Dr. Stephanie Rugg received $5,551 for sophisticated research equipment similar to what is used at the college level to measure pH and spectrophotometry in the classroom. “I was very excited when I heard about this grant,” said Rugg, “because it gives my students an opportunity to do more experimentation and have hands-on experience.”
Immaculate prides itself on being on the forefront of STEM education (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) and is committed to exposing students to a variety of innovative fields. The school, which just celebrated its 60th anniversary, was once again ranked the #1 Catholic Co-Ed Day School in Connecticut. It also jumped four spots to become the #4 Catholic High School in the state in Niche’s 2024 rankings. Immaculate’s A+ grade puts it in the top 2.5% of all schools in the country.
“Our school’s strong emphasis on a STEM curriculum and extracurricular activities tied to it set our students up for success,” said Jeanine Antonios, Immaculate’s Business and Technology Department Chairperson. “Immaculate students receive professional experience in this field. Recently, a class focused on 3D modeling and printing which is state-of-the art instruction for them.”
Keelan Doherty, who graduated in Immaculate’s Class of 2020, agreed. “My participation in Immaculate’s STEM program was a foundational step in my engineering journey, as it exposed me to the subject of engineering, and over my time in the program it confirmed my passion for it and a desire to further pursue it in college,” said Doherty, who is studying mechanical engineering at Northeastern University. “The program sharpened my ability to approach complex problems with creativity and critical thinking, skills I now apply in every aspect of my academic and professional life.”
“It gave me a leg up in all of my general, introductory level engineering classes as a first-year because I had seen many of the topics in the engineering program at Immaculate,” said Mackenzy Garden '19, who graduated from Stevens Institute of Technology with a Bachelor of Engineering in Biomedical Engineering and is now completing her Master of Science in Chemical Biology.
For the fifth year in a row, Immaculate’s student team the ‘Brave Engineers' won the State Level Real World Design Challenge and went on to the National/International Competition. “That wouldn’t happen without our strong program here,” Antonios said.
The Real World Design Challenge is an annual competition run by public and private partnerships, with the goal of setting a solid foundation for our future STEM workforce. It gives high school students the chance to apply classroom lessons to real-life challenges found in the working world. The Immaculate team has won first place five times on the state level and has been recognized as one of the top three teams nationally.
Using the Project Lead the Way engineering curriculum, Immaculate provides students the opportunity to earn college credits as early as their freshman year. Immaculate also utilizes the Cisco Networking Academy model, which provides a comprehensive course to teach technology skills that are in high demand in today’s business world. Students have the opportunity to earn an A+ certification, which certifies skills in entry-level PC technology. They can also share their interests with other students in the school’s Engineering Club.
Students participate in networking theory, practical experience, soft-skills development and career exploration. The IT Essentials curriculum supports a broad range of national educational goals and prepares students for important exams. Immaculate offers several science Advanced Placement courses that are also part of UCONN’s Early College Experience program for college credit – like the AP Physics class Anthony D’Ausilio teaches.
Immaculate students also excel in the field of cybersecurity. The school’s CyberPatriots team made it to the gold tier in the Connecticut Regional National Youth Cyber Defense Competition this year. Immaculate’s team has won the state competition four times – 2020, 2017, 2016 and 2015. CyberPatriots is a program created by the Air Force Association and its National Youth Cyber Defense Competition puts teams of high school and middle school students in the position of newly hired IT professionals tasked with finding and fixing cybersecurity vulnerabilities in virtual operating systems.
“The competition itself is very teamwork focused,” said Riel Bradley Darlucio ‘24, a member of CyberPatriots team. “Everyone has a job, but we try our best to help each other out. This experience allowed me to grasp the field of I.T. and working on the network.”
A strong focus on math is another part of Immaculate’s STEM curriculum. Two of the school’s students scored in the top 5 percent on the American Invitational Mathematics Exam (AIME) in January. Yipeng (Simon) Zhao ‘24 of Sandy Hook and Junyi (Luka) Lu of Danbury ‘24 qualified for the AIME by scoring high on the national AMC 12 exam recently. Zhao’s score was high enough to earn him a Certificate of Distinction. Immaculate offers students an active Math Club and a National Math Honor Society chapter.
“I have really enjoyed studying math here because there are a lot of great teachers who are passionate about math,” said William Tucker ‘24. “I’m in the Math Honor Society, we do peer tutoring and participate in a lot of math competitions so there are a lot of ways to be involved.”
And those Mustangs interested in business have a host of challenging courses to choose from including: Introduction to Business and Marketing, Personal Finance, Sports and Entertainment Management and Fundamentals of Accounting. The school’s Business and Entrepreneurship Club started off the year with a stock market challenge, where students invest pretend money and track their progress.
All of these offerings do the same thing: prepare students for exciting careers – and for the rigor of college. With 18 AP courses and 9 dual-enrollment classes in cooperation with colleges and universities, Immaculate students definitely get the chance to challenge themselves.
“Our Physics Labs are now equipped with the same technology used in UCONN on-campus Physics courses,” said Anthony D’Ausilio about his Physics dual-enrollment class.
"Since this is a UCONN class, it's great to have an upgraded lab and teach at the college level. The students are very proud of their accomplishments"
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