As part of an ongoing partnership between Towson University’s College of Education and Baltimore County Public Schools (BCPS), 90 fourth graders from Sandy Plains Elementary School recently participated in STEM activities at Towson University. The field trip was a multi-college endeavor, with the students first watching a planetarium show at the Jess & Mildred Fisher College of Science & Mathematics and then participating in mathematical activities in the College of Education.
For the field trip, 21 pre-service teachers from mathematics lecturer Emily Morsberger’s undergraduate course, MATH 323: Teaching mathematics in the elementary school, set out to answer the question, “How can we convey the distances between the planets in our solar system to young children?” The TU students prepared and implemented activities for the fourth graders, enabling them to examine the distances between celestial bodies in the solar system and to create scaled down models of these distances. Mathematics professor, Dr. R. Michael Krach, was also involved in these activities, interacting with the students.
From the experience, elementary education major Brooke Puderbaugh said she “learned how to guide a very hands-on craft activity with a small group of students and balance question asking with work time, also checking for understanding.” While fellow student Emily Plovan expressed her enjoyment of the trip, with it being “such a cool experience” and loving “getting to work with kids and having more opportunities to practice teaching.”
Elementary student appreciation for the field trip was also evident, with one fourth grade student saying, “I liked when we were in the planetarium and when we took the walk to the tiger statue.” Another described having learned “that you can see Jupiter from a star and some of the planets have rings.”
Dr. Diana Cheng, graduate program director of the M.S. in mathematics education, organized the field trip in collaboration with her graduate students and with Sandy Plains Elementary School teachers Katelyn Alvez DeLoach and Liza Lewandowski.
In addition to teaching at Sandy Plains, both Katelyn and Liza are students of the Towson Learning Network, which offers master’s degrees to BCPS teachers in a four-year sequence. Liza began the M.S. in mathematics education program in fall 2024, while Katelyn graduated with an M.S. in mathematics education in May 2025.
The planetarium show was conducted by College of Business and Economics undergraduate accounting major Uchechi Imegwu and sponsored by the Department of Physics, Astronomy and Geosciences’ Planetarium Foundation Fund.
The materials for the mathematical activities were sponsored by a grant from the Mathematical Association of America’s Dolciani Mathematics Enrichment Grant program, thanks to Dr. Diana Cheng, principal investigator on the grant.
