About
The St. Elmo Brady Academy (SEBA) offers project-based learning activities in science, technology, engineering, and math, including hands-on outreach events about plastics, fossil fuels, and recycling. Students have taken part in activities such as mining for coal (bolts) and oil (paperclips) in tubs of rocks, pretending to ship the coal to a power plant, using crude oil to perform separations, building polymers by stringing together paper clips, and exchanging paperclips for Play-Doh to compare molding and extruding.
• Schedule: SEBA offers activities through the STEAM Lab in-school program at Booker T. Washington STEM Academy and through the SPLASH after-school program at Urbana Middle School.
The St. Elmo Brady Academy program began in 2013 under the same name and is named for St. Elmo Brady, the first Black person to earn a PhD in chemistry, who completed his PhD at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign in 1916. The program provides project-based learning activities in STEM for local elementary and middle school students and addresses inequities in STEM fields by increasing awareness of STEM subjects to support STEM interest and identity for students from varied backgrounds. SEBA broadens participation through early exposure to STEM, builds STEM literacy, uses project-based learning, and fosters family and community support systems to encourage STEM learning, and it is an outreach program that seeks to encourage middle school youth from underserved backgrounds to pursue STEM careers.
SEBA will host activities at Booker T. Washington STEM Academy through their STEAM Lab in-school program and at Urbana Middle School through their SPLASH after-school program, and SEBA outreach events involve graduate students and chemical and biomolecular engineering professors engaging with fourth graders at a local elementary school. SEBA is now managed by Valerie O’Brien at the University High School, and there is a sister program relationship between SEBA at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and SEBA at the University of Houston. The Illinois Student Chapter of NOBCChE honors St. Elmo Brady’s legacy through the St. Elmo Brady Lecture Series and the annual St. Elmo Brady Symposium, and St. Elmo Brady was honored by the American Chemical Society with a National Historic Chemical Landmark in Noyes Laboratory on the University of Illinois campus.
The original founders of the St. Elmo Brady Academy are Ricky Greer and Jerrod Henderson (PhD ’10), and the 2024–2025 SEBA Graduate Student Coordinators are Imani Jones and Vijay Shah. Valerie O’Brien is the Coordinator of Equity and Public Engagement at University High and manager of the Brady Academy at the University High School, Oscar (Tre) Irving-Thomas is the Family and Community Engaged STEAMM (FACES) Program Coordinator, and Christopher V. Rao is the Ray and Beverly Mentzer Professor and Department Head of Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering. Jerrod Henderson is a former Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering lecturer and now an assistant professor at the University of Houston, and Antonia Statt is affiliated with materials science and engineering. SEBA is supported through a Partner’s Fund to bring experiences to youth and to showcase the profession of chemical engineering.
Graduate student Dani Harrier said that organizers wanted to empower students to make a difference each day by choosing to reduce, reuse, and recycle and to show them the kinds of big-world problems that engineers are tackling. Antonia Statt said that by the end of the first lesson, students could figure out how plastic items in their classroom were produced and got a sense of all the steps involved in the production, and that they mastered the material and became excited about engineering concepts. Professor Damien Guironnet said that students discovered the problem with depending on limited resources like fossil fuels when they went back to mine for more materials, and that they also learned how difficult it is to recycle plastic by trying to separate different colors of Play-Doh. Professor Sing said that outreach efforts like these remind researchers of what they are working toward, who they are working for, and who they want to work with more in the future by making science more accessible and inclusive.
Last updated January 15, 2026.
• Schedule: SEBA offers activities through the STEAM Lab in-school program at Booker T. Washington STEM Academy and through the SPLASH after-school program at Urbana Middle School.
The St. Elmo Brady Academy program began in 2013 under the same name and is named for St. Elmo Brady, the first Black person to earn a PhD in chemistry, who completed his PhD at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign in 1916. The program provides project-based learning activities in STEM for local elementary and middle school students and addresses inequities in STEM fields by increasing awareness of STEM subjects to support STEM interest and identity for students from varied backgrounds. SEBA broadens participation through early exposure to STEM, builds STEM literacy, uses project-based learning, and fosters family and community support systems to encourage STEM learning, and it is an outreach program that seeks to encourage middle school youth from underserved backgrounds to pursue STEM careers.
SEBA will host activities at Booker T. Washington STEM Academy through their STEAM Lab in-school program and at Urbana Middle School through their SPLASH after-school program, and SEBA outreach events involve graduate students and chemical and biomolecular engineering professors engaging with fourth graders at a local elementary school. SEBA is now managed by Valerie O’Brien at the University High School, and there is a sister program relationship between SEBA at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and SEBA at the University of Houston. The Illinois Student Chapter of NOBCChE honors St. Elmo Brady’s legacy through the St. Elmo Brady Lecture Series and the annual St. Elmo Brady Symposium, and St. Elmo Brady was honored by the American Chemical Society with a National Historic Chemical Landmark in Noyes Laboratory on the University of Illinois campus.
The original founders of the St. Elmo Brady Academy are Ricky Greer and Jerrod Henderson (PhD ’10), and the 2024–2025 SEBA Graduate Student Coordinators are Imani Jones and Vijay Shah. Valerie O’Brien is the Coordinator of Equity and Public Engagement at University High and manager of the Brady Academy at the University High School, Oscar (Tre) Irving-Thomas is the Family and Community Engaged STEAMM (FACES) Program Coordinator, and Christopher V. Rao is the Ray and Beverly Mentzer Professor and Department Head of Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering. Jerrod Henderson is a former Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering lecturer and now an assistant professor at the University of Houston, and Antonia Statt is affiliated with materials science and engineering. SEBA is supported through a Partner’s Fund to bring experiences to youth and to showcase the profession of chemical engineering.
Graduate student Dani Harrier said that organizers wanted to empower students to make a difference each day by choosing to reduce, reuse, and recycle and to show them the kinds of big-world problems that engineers are tackling. Antonia Statt said that by the end of the first lesson, students could figure out how plastic items in their classroom were produced and got a sense of all the steps involved in the production, and that they mastered the material and became excited about engineering concepts. Professor Damien Guironnet said that students discovered the problem with depending on limited resources like fossil fuels when they went back to mine for more materials, and that they also learned how difficult it is to recycle plastic by trying to separate different colors of Play-Doh. Professor Sing said that outreach efforts like these remind researchers of what they are working toward, who they are working for, and who they want to work with more in the future by making science more accessible and inclusive.
Last updated January 15, 2026.
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