MCLA Celebrates STEM Week with Virtual Programming

08:05AM / Thursday, October 14, 2021Print Story | Email Story

NORTH ADAMS, Mass. — MCLA and the Berkshire STEM Network will offer virtual programming for local public school students, K-12 educators, and the general community during Berkshire County STEM Week (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) from Oct. 18-22.

A complement to the statewide STEM Week initiative, Berkshire County STEM Week's theme is "See Yourself in STEM." Free and open to the public, the week will feature a series of unique virtual panels, workshops, speakers, tours and information about opportunities in science, technology, engineering and math in the Berkshires and beyond.

Pittsfield Community Television (PCTV) will be the platform host for the week's series of events. Community members can access programming on cable access or at www.pittsfieldtv.org. See a full program schedule at www.mcla.edu/stemweek.

Each day of Berkshire STEM Week is theme-based and is robust in part due to the partners in the Berkshire County STEM network.

Monday, Oct. 18: Food, Farming and Sustainability with contributing programming sessions from Berkshire Grown: "How to Keep Farmers Farming"; fall owling with Williams College; organic agriculture by Full Well Farm; and a LIVE Zoom session with the Food Bank of Western Massachusetts.

Tuesday, Oct. 19: Careers in STEM with programs in building trades, nursing, mental health and design technology.

Wednesday, Oct. 20: STEM in Business, with sessions from Berkshire Innovation Center partners.

Thursday, Oct. 21: STEM Education, with programs from Flying Cloud Institute, the Berkshire Museum, MCLA, BCC, and Williams, as well as the MassHire Berkshire Career Centers Virtual Job Fair from 10 a.m.-1 p.m. Employment opportunities include STEM and manufacturing careers as well as internships and jobs for youth. The program also will have educational resources. An in-person STEM Café will be hosted in the Connector at BCC.

The week will also include all three episodes of "Project Frontline" by Boyd Studios, an Internship and Job Information Session by General Dynamics for MCLA and BCC students, a STEM Education panel hosted by the Berkshire Innovation Center with educators and students, and in-person STEM family programs at the Berkshire Museum on Oct. 23. The Flying Cloud Institute will also offer STEM art kits for families participating in Berkshire STEM Week.

Tags: MCLA, STEM,

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North Adams School Project Awards $51M Bid

By Tammy Daniels iBerkshires Staff
05:10AM / Friday, February 13, 2026

NORTH ADAMS, Mass. — The School Building Committee has awarded the Greylock School project to Fontaine Bros. Inc. of Springfield.

Mayor Jennifer Macksey said she could "breathe a little better" with a bid contract that comes in nearly $2 million under budget.

The committee approved a bid of $50,498,544 on Thursday night that includes two alternates — the rebuild of the Appalachian Trail kiosk and the relocation and reconstruction of the baseball field.

"I will say, all in all, for us to have overall the number of bidders that we had interested in our project, and especially to receive the GC bids that we did, the team Colliers and TSKP certainly did a good job attracting people to us," she said. "But this project ... really shows the testament of the good work that Colliers and TSKP and all of you have been doing throughout this process."

Fontaine had the low bid between Brait Builders of Marshfield and J&J Contractors Inc. of North Billerica.

The project had been bid out at $52,250,000 with three alternates: moving the ballfield, the kiosk and vertical geothermal wells.

Committee members asked Timothy Alix of Collier's International, the owner's project manager, about his impressions of the bidders. He was most familiar with Fontaine, having worked with the company on a half-dozen school projects and noted it was the contractor on the Mountain View Elementary School in Easthampton that the Massachusetts School Building Authority has held up as an example school. He also had some of his colleagues call on projects that he had not personally worked on.

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