STEAM Cathedral

🏎️💡 Time at STEAM Cathedral is always about hands-on learning and growth! Over the past few months our students continued to learn automotive skills, practice teamwork, and apply real-world life lessons in a fun, safe environment.

From under-the-hood learning to stepping outside comfort zones, our students drive their curiosity and confidence forward—because learning is always fun when you're allowed to get your hands dirty! 🛠️✨

Speaking of shirts... we also have a limited number of Trotters Hot Rod Club tees for sale at our booth during Goodguys Rod & Custom Association this weekend!

As the caretakers of the Trotters' custom '35 Ford hauler, memorabilia, and history we designed these shirts to honor the legacy of the first Black hot rod club in Columbus (established in 1953!).

Visit our booth on Saturday from 1-3PM to meet the three remaining living original members, listen as they swap some amazing stories, and maybe even have them autograph your shirt!

All proceeds go to fund our youth development programs and the restoration of the Trotters' hauler.

It’s been a whirlwind since we moved into our very own space at the beginning of the year, but here are a few updates…

This past weekend Maxwell and Halene served as service crew at the Southern Ohio Forest Rally, the fifth round of the American Rally Association National Championship. They assisted the Savage Rallysport crew on Dave Wallingford’s M-Sport Ford Fiesta R5 and Seamus Burke’s wild Ford Es**rt, helping Dave and codriver Leanne Junnila secure a 5th overall finish and Seamus and codriver Gary McElhinney secure 7th overall and 2nd in class! 🏆

A few weeks ago we took Ka’lup to Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course for his first experience at a race track; ride-a-long laps in a race-prepped 650hp C7 Corvette was the highlight of the day, narrowly beating out the Amish donuts sampled on the way to the track.😋

These experiences made core memories for the students for sure; now we’re gearing up to prep the next group of students to be able to take advantage of similar future opportunities as we serve up a unique eight-week mash-up of our intro to motorsports and intro to fabrication curriculums later this month.

Those are just the tip of the iceberg from the past few weeks, so much more has been happening in the new shop with new students being onboarded, existing students maturing and growing in skills and responsibility, and significant progress being made on the ‘67 Camaro and ‘77 MGB restoration projects.

Smash the like button and follow along to stay tuned for more updates! 👍

43º, hail, and periods of rain...our final karting track day of 2024 was a doozy!

Yesterday we journeyed to G&J Kartway one more time as a make-up date for one of our Intro to Motorsports: Karting 101 students and, despite the challenging weather, growth and fun were experienced by all.

This year we took each 101 class to a karting track for their first driving experience and also took our 102 students to a race track weekly for a total of 10 track days and one sanctioned race. We racked up more than 60 hours of on-track time on a shoe-string budget; great results by any metric and especially for karts running engines dismissed as too old to be relevant any longer!

Regularly taking five, or more, high-strung fast two-stoke race karts and running them for hours on end with new drivers is not for the faint of heart. However, by mentoring the students to follow – and help iteratively improve – our prep and maintenance systems, all karts were consistently performing without issue by mid-summer.

A big thank you to Comet Kart Sales for their patient advice and skilled work on our engine top-ends, and to Gary at G & J and Elmer at Wilmington Raceway Park for maintaining excellent race facilities we can utilize to teach our students advance skills.

2024 was a great first year for our karting program; wait until we share our news for ’25... 😉