Visitors to Katy ISD’s Robert R. Shaw Center for STEAM tend to have similar reactions when walking into the $5.4 million, nearly 24,000-square-foot building, said Steve Adams, the facility’s coordinator.

“When kids walk in, there’s one reaction, and when parents walk in, there’s another; it’s always the same,” he said. “Kids walk in; they go, ‘Wow.’ Parents walk in, and look at it and go, ‘I wish they had this when I was a kid.’”

Adams and the center’s instructional specialist, Liz Dethloff, said they view the Shaw Center as a catchall for STEAM—science, technology, engineering, arts and mathematics—education both within the district and the Katy community due to its variety of programs and proximity to the district’s Miller Career & Technology Center.

According to Adams and Dethloff, the aspect of community began with the building’s namesake, Robert R. Shaw—a longtime KISD board of trustees member and local engineer.

“[Shaw] was passionate about all things Katy,” Adams said. “He was an engineer by trade, so that seemed to make this appropriate. He was always in this complex showing people Miller Career Center and all the technology and career opportunities that gives kids. He was always concerned about giving all kids an equal shot.”

Adams and Dethloff said the facility—which opened in February 2015 and serves grades K-12—specializes in five main types of activities: robotics, field trips, summer camps, community engagement events and professional development.

Dethloff said she is conscientious to incorporate the arts and humanities into Shaw Center programs. To accomplish this, she said she focuses on immersive, real-world experiments and has even scheduled a music recording session with the educational arm of the Grammy Awards for Sept. 21. These kinds of events, wherein technology meets the arts, help fulfill the facility’s mission, she said.

“There’s actually two parts to [the ‘A’ in STEAM],” Dethloff said. “There’s the fine arts, but the humanities part is actually tied in with almost all of our activities by looking at the problem-based learning—the project-based learning. It’s solving a real-life problem. It’s looking at concerns that would possibly face them as adults.”

The majority of the building’s area consists of a central arena space, which is surrounded by eight 2,000-square-foot bays that KISD high school robotics teams utilize for the construction, maintenance and storage of their robots and related equipment. The facility also encompasses a large classroom area and a shared shop containing several pieces of machinery, such as a drill press, a band saw, a plasma cutter and a three-dimensional printer.

Adams and Dethloff said this flexible, collaborative shop space is central to the facility’s design. Adams said this is especially true with regard to the robotics teams—some of the featured entities housed within the Shaw Center.

“If you would talk to these robotics clubs, they would go on and on about what this place means to them,” Adams said. “I think the point I want to emphasize most [to students] is to be collaborative with one another. There’s nothing more valuable than the brain power.”

Architecture honor

Tom Gunnell, KISD’s chief operations officer, announced June 27 at a board of trustees meeting that Stantec—the firm that designed the Shaw Center—had informed the district the facility is one of three finalists for the 2016 MacConnell Award.

Named after James D. MacConnell—who is widely considered to be the father of educational facility planning—the international award is given out annually to the project that best meets various criteria. Criteria include community engagement, innovative programming and functional adaptability.

“[Gunnell] described it as the Super Bowl of educational building awards,” Adams said. “So, this is the biggest award you can get as an educational building. And to be in the top three in the world is amazing.”

Adams said the Shaw Center staff is expecting Stantec to announce the winner by early October.   

According to Adams and Dethloff, the cooperative layout of the building, its usage and its energy efficiency certification through the Collaborative for High Performance Schools are some of the features that have helped put the Shaw Center in the running for the honor.

“One thing they kept stressing, Stantec, was definitely the importance of the unique use of the building and the way it can be used differently day to day,” Dethloff said.

As the Shaw Center continues to grow, Adams and Dethloff said they enjoy watching students discover new interests and career possibilities.

“They just get excited that science is actually fun and hands-on and, ‘Yeah, I want to pursue that,’” Adams said.