Building a Space for Wonder: Liz Stieber on the New STEAM Lab at St. Benedict Catholic School

A classroom can be more than a place to learn facts. It can be a place where curiosity takes over, students discover new talents, and an experience today begins shaping the person they will become years from now.

In this episode of Women in the Driver Seat, host Mary Helen Darah visits St. Benedict Catholic School with Liz Stieber, Director of Finance & Operations for Little Flower Catholic Parish and St. Benedict Catholic School, to explore a new space created with exactly that kind of future in mind.

The school’s new STEAM Lab brings science, technology, engineering, art, and mathematics together through hands on learning. For Liz, however, the excitement surrounding the lab is about much more than new equipment. It is about giving every student an opportunity to explore, collaborate, create, and discover skills that could stay with them for life.

Creating New Opportunities for Students

The new lab represents an important milestone for St. Benedict. Liz shares that St. Benedict is the first Catholic elementary school across the 19 counties of the Diocese of Toledo to have a STEAM lab of its kind.

While that distinction is meaningful, Liz is even more excited about what students will be able to do inside the room.

Each part of STEAM offers valuable educational opportunities on its own, but bringing those subjects together allows students to approach learning differently. Instead of simply reading about an idea, they can work together, experiment, solve problems, and see concepts come to life.

Liz believes that collaborative approach will help students strengthen critical thinking and teamwork while giving them the freedom to be creative.

For her, those lessons are some of the most important things the lab can provide.

Students will certainly develop technical knowledge, but they will also practice communication, collaboration, problem solving, and working as a team. Those abilities extend far beyond a single class or assignment.

“They’re going to learn how to team build. They’re going to learn how to critically think. They’re going to have to collaborate,” Liz explains.

Those are skills students can continue using throughout school, their future careers, and their everyday lives.

A Space Designed for Every Path

As Director of Finance & Operations, Liz played an important role in helping oversee the investment that made the lab possible. Seeing the completed space now brings her a strong sense of joy.

She describes herself as someone who is deeply invested in the students of St. Benedict, and that personal connection influences the way she looks at the lab and its potential.

One of the things that matters most to her is that the room was not created for only one type of student or one vision of success.

Some students may eventually attend college. Others may pursue a trade or another career path. Liz sees tremendous value in both.

“This room is for every student in our building,” she says.

That idea sits at the heart of the STEAM Lab.

Students can discover what interests them, gain practical experience, and develop abilities that may help them recognize possibilities they had never considered before. A student who walks into the lab simply excited to try something new could leave with the beginning of an interest that eventually becomes a career.

For Liz, that potential is difficult to measure.

The investment is not just in technology. It is an investment in opportunities students can carry with them into whatever comes next.

Bringing Creativity to Life

When Mary Helen asks Liz to choose her favorite part of the new lab, one feature quickly rises to the top: the green screen and audiovisual equipment.

Liz is particularly excited about giving students opportunities to create podcasts, work with video, and develop experience in front of and behind the camera.

Those projects combine several of the ideas behind STEAM learning at once. Students can plan, write, communicate, use technology, solve problems, and create something they can share with others.

Liz also sees those resources opening the door to greater collaboration between St. Benedict Catholic School and Little Flower Catholic Parish.

She imagines students using the lab to create content that can become part of parish life. An altar server, for example, could record a video explaining why they chose to serve and share that message on screens in the church, potentially inspiring another child to participate.

It is a simple example of how one learning space can connect education, faith, communication, and community.

And when given the choice between learning from a book or learning by doing, Liz does not hesitate.

Hands on learning wins.

Excitement, Wonder, and a Look Toward the Future

Near the end of the conversation, Mary Helen asks Liz for one word she hopes students feel when they enter the STEAM Lab.

Liz cannot choose just one.

Her two words are excitement and wonder.

They capture what she hopes the room becomes for generations of St. Benedict students. It should be a place where children are eager to walk through the door, comfortable asking questions, and curious enough to try something they have never done before.

The greatest measure of the lab’s success may not come this year or even while its current students are still at St. Benedict.

Liz thinks about what those students might say a decade from now.

Her hope is that they will look back at the experiences they had in the lab and recognize that something they learned, created, or discovered there helped transform their lives.

That long term vision is what makes the new space so meaningful. The technology will evolve. Students will move on. Career paths will change. But curiosity, collaboration, confidence, and the ability to think through a challenge can continue serving them wherever life takes them.

For Liz, that is what makes the STEAM Lab such an exciting investment in the future of St. Benedict Catholic School.

👉 Watch now to tour the new STEAM Lab with Liz Stieber and hear why she hopes the space inspires excitement, wonder, and new possibilities for every St. Benedict student.