PK - 12 Catholic Academy
Developing future leaders through inquiry learning.
Magnify your abilities
With a driving focus on developing future innovators and problem solvers, St. Mary’s has comprehensive PK-12 curriculum, extracurricular activities, and community service and outreach programs focused on STEM. Through these programs, our students gain tangible skillsets which prepare them for future careers and entrepreneurial endeavors.
As we developed our STEM program, we set out with the goal of identifying what a graduate of St. Mary’s academy would look like. What characteristics would they possess that would set them apart from other students?
Based on this thought process, we identified key traits that we desired to develop in our students. Each of these intentionally helps focus our curriculum and ensures that we are producing students who are able to take on the challenges of the world outside the classroom through innovative thinking, creativity, and resilience.
Our elementary students benefit from a standards-aligned STEM progression which focuses on discovery, exploration, and problem-solving skill development.
Throughout the progression, students obtain quality instruction that includes:
Some of the topics that students learn about through our progression include:
These topics and more are tightly integrated in the weekly STEM time as well as their normal class activities.
As our students continue to build their STEM traits and progress through our program, they reach our middle school STEM progression. At these grade levels, the focus is on skill development as well as solving more complex and challenging problems.
Our middle school students receive a semester each year of daily STEM instruction. This semester is broken into a STEM lab and a STEM course. Throughout this instruction, all grade levels complete multiple design challenges. Whether it is designing joints to mimic those found in nature (as seen in the image on the right) or creating automated components for our school chicken coop, students are engaged in a broad array of novel and challenging design problems.
In addition to the design challenges, students cover a range of topics and learn a variety of skills that build upon each other to
At St. Mary’s Academy, we believe that true innovation happens when standard-aligned classroom theory meets hands-on, real-world application. Extending learning from the traditional classroom into dynamic after-school environments allows students to deeply internalize academic concepts, test their limits, and build crucial life skills in a collaborative, low-stakes setting.
To bridge this gap, our school proudly provides a rich ecosystem of STEM-related clubs and after-school programs, including Aviation Club, Competition Drones, 4-H, and Robotics. These programs transform passive consumers of technology into active creators and critical thinkers.
Covering all grade levels, our premier competition robotics program offers students a unique arena to practice design thinking. Because the engineering challenges change entirely each year, students cannot rely on memorized formulas. Instead, they must analyze new problems, rapidly prototype solutions, test under pressure, and learn the invaluable lesson of iterating through failure.
As a proud FIRST member school, we are excited to deliver these high-quality, national standard-aligned programs. Through these competitions, our students don’t just learn to code or build hardware—they master teamwork, project management, and strategic communication, preparing them directly for the collaborative demands of the modern workforce and entrepreneurial landscapes.
Engaging everyone in design thinking
Design challenges are far more than traditional science experiments—they are a catalyst for continuous growth, ensuring all students stretch their capabilities by applying critical skills to complex, age-appropriate problems.
To deepen this impact, our faculty and STEM committee collaborate with students each year to launch a massive, school-wide design challenge. Crucially, the theme of this challenge changes annually to focus on urgent global problems, pushing our students to think as global citizens and view engineering through a lens of sustainability, resource management, and real-world necessity.
These large-scale initiatives are intentionally engineered to break down classroom walls. By involving our entire student body, we create a rich mentorship ecosystem where every grade level contributes uniquely to a singular, monumental goal. This cross-functional teamwork mirrors the modern global workforce, proving to students that big problems require diverse perspectives.
