Coppell ISD Education Foundation

Day 3️⃣ of CEF Interactive Institute proved that science shows up everywhere, even in cookies, motors, and music!

Three partners turned today into a reminder that STEAM isn't confined to a lab:
➡With Coppell ISD Child Nutrition, students swapped the cafeteria line for the science bench, baking cookies from scratch to discover how a single ingredient change can completely transform texture, flavor, and the way a cookie bakes🍪

➡ With AstraZeneca, students became engineers — assembling their own WaddleBots, simple robots powered by a low-voltage motor, and learning how electricity becomes motion when every component works together. Build, test, troubleshoot, repeat: exactly how the pros do it 🧑‍🔧

➡ And with Brazos Creative, students discovered that music is science you can hear — exploring how sound, frequency, and rhythm work by deconstructing a song they all know, remixing it with their own lyrics, and performing it together as a group 🎤

This is hands-on STEAM. Real professionals, real tools, real "whoa!"

A huge thank-you to the chefs, dietitians, engineers, and musicians who showed our students that science and creativity live everywhere ☺️

Day 2 of CEF Interactive Institute was a masterclass in what happens when professionals show up for kids 🖤♥️

The team from Corgan Inc. didn't just send a facilitator — they brought a full crew of architects and engineers who spent the entire morning shoulder-to-shoulder with our students, sketching, building, testing, and cheering them on.

Together, they engineered towers to survive an earthquake table, designed original buildings from the ground up, and ran a no-talking design challenge where students had to communicate an entire build through drawings alone.

We want to give a special shout-out to the facilitators in the room: working designers trading their morning for the chance to pass what they know to the next generation. This is what partnership looks like at CEF Interactive Institute; our students got to stand next to the people who do architecture and engineering every day.

Corgan Inc. is a CEF Champion (our highest level of business partnership), investing in Coppell ISD students and teachers year-round. We're so grateful to have them in our corner, today and all year long.

This is hands-on STEAM. Real professionals, real tools, real "whoa!"

Day 1 of CEF Interactive Institute is in the books, and our students dove all the way in!

This morning, 3️⃣ of our incredible partners turned classrooms into real-world labs, and every room looked completely different:
➡ With UT Southwestern Medical Center & Cochlear Americas, students explored how we actually hear — even practicing placing cochlear implant electrodes on models, the same precision work that happens in an operating room.
➡ With Autonomous Solutions, Inc., students test-drove an autonomous off-road vehicle using Mobius — the same software ASI's engineers use in the field — programming it, monitoring it, and working out whether the robot was actually doing what it was told.
➡ And at Microsoft, kids became city designers for the day: dreaming up their own smart cities, tackling a real problem, and pitching their ideas to the group.

This is hands-on STEAM. Real professionals, real tools, real "whoa!" Four more days to go!

Experiences like this are powered by our community. Learn how CEF keeps real-world learning within reach for Coppell students: coppellisdef.org

🌮 Make it a Mexican food Monday today at 's Tex Mex - Coppell 🌮
Huge thanks to our long-standing Champion Sponsor for supporting our schools! ❤️

What do crushed gemstones, liquid gold, and a rainforest have in common? Monika Dogra can tell you! 🎨🌿

Monika is a master of a 10th-century Indian miniature art form – paintings made with powdered gemstones and liquid gold, where a single 6"x6" piece can take six months to finish. She's also spent 15 years teaching across DFW, blending art, botany, and design.

At the 2026 Interactive Institute, she's leading S2 Art Studio's "Reviving Rainforests in the Palm of Your Hand," where students design and build their very own desktop rainforest ecosystem to take home. They'll layer a living forest floor, engineer a water-recycling system, and prototype a tiny world that actually works.

Part art, part science, all wonder – and proof that creativity and conservation belong together.

This is hands-on STEAM. Real professionals, real tools, real "whoa!"

Camp may be full, but the mission isn't finished. Your gift fuels what's next for Coppell students → www.coppellisdef.org

Here's a surprise about self-driving vehicles: the engineers who build them spend way more time writing code and arguing about edge cases than actually driving anything🤖

At the 2026 Interactive Institute, the team from Autonomous Solutions, Inc. is handing students the controls, including Santosh Shelar, a robotics software engineer with 20+ years in the field (and 7 spent mentoring FIRST Robotics teams), and chief engineer Taleb Zeitouny.

Using ASI's real Mobius software and a vehicle simulator, students will test whether an autonomous off-road vehicle is behaving exactly as programmed — then analyze the results to decide if it passed, the same way engineers do before sending a robot into dangerous terrain with no one behind the wheel.

The moment that vehicle responds to their commands on screen? In the team's words, that's when "building robots isn't just a dream, it's a career."

This is hands-on STEAM. Real professionals, real tools, real "whoa!"

Want to see more sessions like this? So do we! Support the work behind the Interactive Institute → www.coppellisdef.org

Can a cookie teach chemistry? The Coppell ISD Child Nutrition team says absolutely!🍪

At the 2026 Interactive Institute, the district's own registered dietitians and Chef Anthony Brasberger are running "The Cookie Experiment," where students bake from scratch and discover how one small ingredient swap changes everything about a cookie's texture, flavor, and bake.

Here's what surprises kids most: school lunch isn't "just lunch." It's food science, math, safety regulations, and teamwork to feed thousands of students a day, like running a restaurant, a science lab, and a delivery business all at once.

This is hands-on STEAM. Real professionals, real tools, real "whoa!" (and yes, real cookies :)

Proud of what's happening in CISD classrooms and camps? Put your support behind it! → www.coppellisdef.org

Build a working robot before lunch? At the 2026 Interactive Institute, that's the assignment! 🤖

Steven Medina, an electrical engineer at AstraZeneca with 17 years in the pharmaceutical industry, is leading the WaddleBot Workshop, where students assemble a robot powered by a low-voltage motor and learn how power translates into motion.

But the real lesson is bigger than the bot: read the instructions, understand how each piece works, troubleshoot when it doesn't, and solve it as a team. These are the same skills behind careers in engineering and the skilled trades.

In Steven's words, you're not just building a machine – you're building "the leaders of the future." This is hands-on STEAM. Real professionals, real tools, real "whoa!"

We can't wait to share what these students create. Help us do even more next year → www.coppellisdef.org

Think being an architect is all about math? Jake Salo would tell you the skill that takes you furthest might surprise you: drawing ✏️

At the 2026 Interactive Institute, Jake, a project architect at Corgan Inc. who's spent 10 years designing schools right here in DFW, is putting students in the designer's seat. They'll build towers and shake them on a real earthquake table, sketch and pitch their own buildings, and rebuild a teammate's Lego design using only written plans. The kicker? No talking allowed!

It's a crash course in how real structures get imagined, communicated, and built. This is hands-on STEAM. Real professionals, real tools, real "whoa!"

Sessions like this are why the Interactive Institute exists, and your support helps CEF bring real-world STEAM to more Coppell ISD students. Give today at www.coppellisdef.org

What if bringing a species back from extinction wasn't science fiction? 🦣

At the 2026 Interactive Institute, Dr. Darya Tourzani, a reproductive biologist at Colossal Biosciences – the company working on de-extinction and protecting endangered species, is turning students into conservation scientists for a day.

They'll build a living ecosystem, then face the real curveballs the pros deal with: habitat loss, invasive species, and even extinction events. Their job? Develop a recovery plan and defend it.

Dr. Darya hopes that the next big breakthrough comes from a student sitting in that very room :) This is hands-on STEAM. Real professionals, real tools, real "whoa!"

Love seeing this? It's powered by the Coppell ISD Education Foundation. Chip in to fuel what's next: www.coppellisdef.org