UW Youth in STEM Conference Brings Hands-On Tech Workshops to Laramie

The University of Wyoming will open its campus to junior middle and high school students on Tuesday, May 19, for the Youth in STEM Conference, a daylong program from 8:30 a.m. to 2:15 p.m. spread across multiple locations in Laramie. The event is designed to do more than introduce students to science and computing. It puts them in the middle of it, with workshops that let participants follow and modify code in real time and watch artificial intelligence and machine learning models take shape on low-cost edge devices.

That hands-on approach gives Albany County students a local entry point into fields that often feel out of reach, especially for young people in smaller communities outside Wyoming’s larger population centers. By bringing the conference to the University of Wyoming campus, organizers are connecting families, teachers and students in Laramie and across the county to the state’s main public research university, where science, engineering and computing pathways can lead toward Wyoming jobs.

The conference also reflects UW’s effort to broaden who sees themselves in STEM. In 2025, the university renamed the event from Women in STEM to Youth in STEM to reflect its inclusive nature. Megan Candelaria said the goal remains to “engage, inspire and cultivate Wyoming’s future STEM workforce.” That change matters in a state where access to specialized STEM programming can be uneven, especially for rural students and first-generation college prospects who may not often see this kind of instruction up close.

The scale of the event is significant. Last year’s conference drew nearly 650 junior middle and high school students from 19 schools across Wyoming, and UW offered 36 hands-on workshops. Each participant completed three workshops and met professionals who use science in their careers. The conference has also become a long-running fixture on the university calendar, marking its 25th year in 2025 after being held virtually in 2021 and in its 24th year in 2024.

UW’s broader outreach reinforces that pipeline. The Science Initiative Roadshow said its hands-on STEM programming reached nearly 8,000 K-12 students, educators and senior citizens across Wyoming in the prior year. The College of Engineering and Physical Sciences also says K-12 classes can visit campus for hands-on activities and tours of state-of-the-art facilities and innovation centers, keeping Laramie at the center of a statewide effort to build the next generation of STEM talent.