STEAM education is an integrated approach to learning that uses Science, Technology, Engineering, the Arts, and Mathematics to guide students and open their minds to the world around them. Advancing on the foundation of STEM, which embraces creativity, collaboration, critical thinking, and communication, STEAM complements by further embracing curiosity and connection.  

Hands-on education and experiential learning afford students a unique opportunity to gain an understanding and awareness for how they learn. Through this awareness, relevant and purposeful learning occurs. The concepts of STEAM are woven throughout programs that align with business and industry demands. Students learn and develop employable skills that are job specific: leadership, initiative, entrepreneurship, reliability, planning and organizing, critical thinking, problem solving, communications, teamwork. 

STEAM empowers faculty to employ project-based learning that crosses each of the five disciplines of STEAM into technical programming. This fosters an inclusive learning environment in which all students are able to engage, collaborate, problem solve and contribute. Instead of teaching mathematics separate from a technical skill, the concepts can be taught together. This intentional connection highlights the complementary nature of the concepts and leads to creativity and innovation in thinking and learning.  

Our current and future students will move into the world of work with flexible, expandable minds fueled by a greater understanding of history, mathematics, art and language.

As North Dakota’s Polytechnic Institution, BSC will generate the STEAM that fuels our students’ success.

Welding is critical to both the energy and manufacturing industries in North Dakota. With power plants producing energy, those facilities have to be maintained 24 hours a day. "It requires the skill of welding. You also have manufacturing in this state – John Deere, Case, Caterpillar, Bobcat, Tru North Steel – that utilize welders,” said David Mozingo, assistant professor of welding at BSC. “There is a broad range of how welding touches all our lives from industry to entertainment. It is in everything we use – this chair, this building, your car, your oven, your microwave, the soldered joints that are in your computer or, if it’s formed plastic, the machine that formed it was welded together,” he said. Welding’s reach has even expanded to BSC’s Art Department.  READ MORE about Sparks for Industry and Art

Collaboration results in a modern farmhouse incorporating the artistic talent of carpentry and visual art student Kelsey Skenderovic. Skenderovic designed and fired the tiles around the fireplace, working with her classmates and instructors on the installation. READ MORE about The Art of Carpentry