On Saturday, June 10, 2023, Lake Charles Partners in Parks held its second annual STEM Fun Day at the Park. The free family event was held at Drew Park at 416 Michael DeBakey Dr. from 8:30 am – 10:30 a.m.  

In a prior discussion, Lake Charles Mayor Nic Hunter said, “We are thrilled to collaborate with Phillips 66 and the Children’s Museum once again with the overwhelmingly successful event that promises educational fun for the entire family. When we launched Partners in Parks in 2018, our goal was to not only create new partnerships that would allow us to make transformative changes to the infrastructure of our city parks without additional financial burden to our citizens but also to enhance and re-energize park programming through innovative community partnerships.”

The collaboration between The City of Lake Charles’ Partner in Parks, Phillips 66, and the Children’s Museum held the first STEM event in 2022. 

WHAT IS ‘STEM FUN DAY AT THE PARK’  

STEM is an acronym for Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math education. It is an interdisciplinary approach that helps students succeed in college and in their future careers. The focus of STEM education is hands-on, problem-based learning. The STEM Fun Day in the Park is to educate parents and children while having fun. Phillips 66 is enthusiastic about educating while demonstrating STEM activities. Along with the STEM educational activities, the children enjoyed rides on Chuck the Train, visited with Phillip 66’s first responders and their fire truck, and parents could purchase meals from A Taste of New Orleans food truck or cool the kids down with free refreshments provided by The City of Lake Charles.

Elizabeth Eustis, Social Impact Advisor at Phillips 66, spoke with SWLA Journal.
“This is our second year partnering with the city of Lake Charles to do their Partners in Parks activities and events for the area, and each — starting last year — we have done a ‘STEM Day’, where we have different booths throughout the park where kids can experience different science reactions. We have things like elephant toothpaste, fire snake, slime,; we also have lava lamps, and we also do a couple of fire truck safety demonstrations and things like that as well, so it is a really awesome day.”

Emily Fontenot, Lee Terrebonne, and Carson Black, three of Phillips 66’s interns, demonstrated how to create fire snakes with assistance from some of the children, while on the other side of the park, children worked diligently on erecting their own refinery. Participants and hosts were excited about seeing STEM concepts in action.

“As far as Phillips 66, we do partner with some of our local organizations like Big Brother & Big Sister, and we do events with them. We also have four Partners in Education schools that we team up with throughout the year. And then just be on the lookout for events that we host for the community because this will definitely not be the only one we host throughout the year.”

For more information on upcoming events, go to Visit Lake Charles or for information on Phillip 66’s community involvement, contact Elizabeth.f.eustis@p66.com or at 337-491-4767.