The company behind the event says its goal is closing a gap in what local students know about technical careers, and who is around to encourage them.

More than 3,100 people turned out for the fourth annual Beaumont Family STEM Night, hosted by ExxonMobil and Beaumont ISD, according to The Beaumont Enterprise. The expo-style evening featured more than 60 booths with robots, VR headsets, and hands-on experiments for students of every age. Kids could take home a STEM kit and enter drawings for door prizes that included a tablet and a laptop.

At the event, ExxonMobil presented BISD with two checks totaling $250,000 for STEM education, literacy, and workforce readiness programs across the district.

The reason behind the event is the most interesting part. ExxonMobil complex manager Phil Matherne told the Enterprise the company started STEM Night in 2023 after noticing a gap among local students heading into engineering and technology fields. He pointed to two causes: students often do not know what those careers look like, and too few people around them are encouraging it.

That is a problem a booth can start to solve. A child who drives a robot or tries a VR headset is getting the thing Matherne said was missing, a first look at where the path leads. Two brothers who have come every year since the event began told the Enterprise the robots were their favorite part.

Families are paying close attention to Beaumont's schools right now. Nights like this show what a community can build around its students when it shows up together.

Where you fit: Educators and volunteers who want to support STEM learning can find volunteer and vendor information on the BISD STEM Night page at bmtisd.com.