Outreach
STEM education and sailing are for everyone
Dr. Cereceda combines his passions for sailing and STEM education at the Downtown Sailing Center (DSC) in Baltimore Inner Harbor, where he is a member since 2017, the year he started his Postdoctoral Fellowship at Johns Hopkins.
Through his experience as an active volunteer in the STEM programs at the DSC, Dr. Cereceda has noticed that sailing is a vibrant environment to learn about physics and nature. In these programs, students at local elementary and middle schools have the opportunity to sail, learn STEM subjects, and do some physical activity. The STEM component of the program utilizes US Sailing’s REACH curriculum, which is based on several hands-on learning modules that introduce students to concepts such as lift and drag, buoyancy, diesel engines, weather patterns, and water quality.
Engineering is for Girls! Day
Since joining Villanova, Dr. Cereceda has actively participated in the “Engineering is for Girls! Day” annual event, where nearly 100 4th- through 8th-grade girls from local schools participate in a variety of hands-on STEM activities organized by the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Villanova. One of them, designed by Dr. Cereceda, focuses on using straws to build creative structures that support the 3 Villanova NCAA Championships in static equilibrium.
