Advanced Sciences, a short-form for Sammamish Institute of Technology and Advanced Sciences (SITAS) was started as an institute for RELEVANT, FUTURISTIC, AFFORDABLE AND COMPETITION-GRADE education in arts and sciences for residents of Sammamish, accessible for all levels of public school students, college undergraduates, working professionals and anyone interested in furthering their passion for learning.

The goal of SITAS is to make education AVAILABLE to the residents of Sammamish, RELEVANT to their needs, make it AFFORDABLE and make it meaningful for their future career paths. SITAS believes that the future of education and humanity rests on three foundational pillars:

Quality Academic Education: Healthy life style that includes respecting the institutions and laws of the United States and following the culture of moral and ethical principles that promote consistent peaceful and compassionate social behavior.

Environmental Stewardship: Development that happens at the cost of environmental sustainability is self-destructive of life on our planet. SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT is the need of the hour. SITAS aims to offer coaching, training, and seminars about sustainable living, awareness, and nurturing of dynamic interrelated ecosystems of life, green-living, how-to re-use and recycle, composting, micro-farming, HOW-TOs for solar projects and in general respect of life. Healthy Food, Life style, and Psychological Stability are essential for a happy and productive life.

These positive life skills learned during the formative years of a child’s development become the values that sustain a person throughout their adult life.

Self-learning, self-paced learning, and project-based learning will be the core of the learning pedagogy adopted by SITAS. These will be assisted with milestone based coaching and mentoring programs, supported by intensive online tests and audio-video education assets, online assignments, peer assessments and feed backs, online forum discussion (both guided and unguided) and so on.

Counselling and career guidance is the single most important factor that determines the course of life and future opportunities for a student. If this goes wrong the first time, the course correction is extremely difficult if not impossible. This is going to be SITAS most important area of emphasis for students and learners of all ages and stages.

Programs for school children will emphasize building students of the future. Students who are thorough in their knowledge and know the basics well, know the speed methods to be competitive, are independent learners (strong reading and comprehension), and able to address future challenges by virtue of their acquired self-reliant capabilities.

Enrichment programs best meet the needs of students who engage in competition-grade education. With emphasis on Math aptitude, reading and comprehension, reasoning skills, special topics like algebra, geometry, counting and probability, statistics, trigonometry, calculus and so on, we will provide them with enough confidence to meet the criterion’s of a competitive workplace.

There will also be programs to prepare kids for participating in competitions. Competitions for Math such as ACM8, ACM10, COMPASS, AIME, USAMO, IMO, MATHCOUNTS, NOETIC, KANGAROO MATH, MATH-IS-COOL and so on… It will be facilitated with online training’s, quizzes, classroom-sessions and so on. Competitions other than Math such as National Spelling Bee, National Geography Bee, SAT will also be covered.

Greater Seattle area and Sammamish in particular is full of top-end and some of the best technology talent of the world. Professionals have their learning needs too. Technology is evolving very fast and is many times even obsolete within 2 years. There is a constant need to regularly upgrade ones skills to be relevant, competitive and up-to-date with technology. With over 70% of the Sammamish workforce and 0% of technology colleges in Sammamish, SITAS plans to offer short to mid-term certificate courses to the working technology professionals.

SITAS will offer Executive development courses focusing on leadership and other soft skills.

SITAS is going to adopt a very LEAN approach for rolling out courses to the student community. There are many courses that will be offered throughout the year. While there will be others that will be offered once a quarter. There are still others that will be offered only once a year. SITAS will very carefully evaluate the demand for the courses from time to time and select the most appropriate pedagogy based on feedback from the participants, parents and distinguished guest/ permanent faculty.

SITAS Partnerships

To facilitate working practitioners to transfer knowledge to the high school students and adults in the greater Sammamish area, partnerships have been initiated with the following organizations to source top talent as part-time volunteers:

1. TEALS (Technology Education and Literacy in Schools) to help build sustainable computer science programs by pairing trained computer science professionals – from across the tech industry – with classroom teachers to team-teach computer science to our student group

2. Washington FIRST Robotics for the FIRST LEGO League (for Ages 9 thru 14), FIRST Tech Challenge (for Grades 7 thru 12), and FIRST Robotics Competition (for Grades 9 to 12)

3. The Girls Who Code Immersion Program embedding high school juniors and seniors inside a technology company or university setting from 9-4 PM each day. Here, young women get hands-on experience in computing concepts, programming fundamentals, mobile phone development, robotics, and web development and design. Project-based curricular modules allow participants to build products and develop innovative solutions designed to inspire an interest in and encourage their pursuit of computer science.

4. Project Lead The Way providing a comprehensive approach to STEM Education. Through activity, project, and problem-based curriculum, PLTW gives students in kindergarten through high school a chance to apply what they know, identify problems, find unique solutions, and lead their own learning

5. Code.org for the computer science curriculum and CS Principles Curriculum Framework.

6. Microsoft Corporation: Authorized Educational Partner program (Organization Partner ID: 4730753): The AEP program authorizes us to purchase and re-sell academic priced products to Qualified Educational Users.

Summary

In summary, SITAS will start a brand new chapter in the history of the city with RELEVANT, FUTURISTIC, AFFORDABLE AND COMPETITION-GRADE education for students, working professionals and home makers alike.