Monday, May 4, 2026

Pasadena Students Trade Textbooks for Batting Cages at Dodgers STEM Field Day

More than 500 pupils from four school districts, including Pasadena Unified, use baseball to learn geometry, physics and sustainability at a Compton ballpark honoring Jackie Robinson

Pasadena students measured strike zones, calculated wind resistance on the base paths and studied the waste a ballpark produces — all on fields named for a man who once played shortstop at John Muir High School in their own city.

The Los Angeles Dodgers Foundation is hosting its annual STEM Field Day on Monday, May 4, bringing more than 500 Dodgers Dreamteam participants and students from the Pasadena, Los Angeles, Hawthorne, and Inglewood unified school districts to Gonzales Park for hands-on activities connecting science, technology, engineering, and mathematics to baseball and softball.

The event is planned for 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. today at Dodgers Dreamfields Nos. 52–54 on Rachel Robinson Field, Jackie Robinson Stadium and Field 42 — a complex honoring the baseball legend who grew up on Pepper Street in Pasadena and starred at Muir before breaking the sport’s color barrier in 1947.

The foundation organized the field day in partnership with Science of Sport, a nonprofit that develops curricula using athletics to teach STEM concepts.

Students who will attend have spent the school year learning the foundation’s Science of Baseball curriculum, which is aligned with Next Generation Science Standards and taught by teachers who completed required training to deliver it in their classrooms, according to an LADF press release.

Participants will rotate through stations covering geometry, sustainability and aerodynamics as applied to the sport. Activities include calculating the area of a strike zone, studying waste generated at a baseball field and running the bases to learn about wind resistance, according to the press release.

Students will also be engaged with an interactive STEM wall and use the Science of Baseball outdoor classroom, both features unique to the Gonzales Park complex.

Members of the Dodgers Performance Science team, led by Senior Director Megan Schroeder, supported the event by auditing the curriculum and will lead students through each station alongside teachers, according to the team.

Schroeder, who holds a Ph.D. in biomedical engineering from Northwestern University, has used her role with the Dodgers to advocate for encouraging young people to enter STEM fields.

The Dodgers said that since 2018, LADF has trained more than 500 teachers and reached more than 100,000 students through its Science of Baseball curriculum.

The curriculum was developed through a grant from LADF to Science of Sport, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit founded by Ricardo Valerdi, a professor of systems and industrial engineering at the University of Arizona.

ARCO, LADWP, and SoCal Gas are sponsoring the field day, according to the press release. Chaitali Gala Mehta, LADF’s chief operating officer, and Daren Heaton, executive director of Science of Sport, were expected to be among the representatives at the event.

The Pasadena connection to the Gonzales Park complex extends beyond the students in attendance today.

Jackie Robinson, Pasadena’s hometown hero, attended Cleveland Elementary School, Washington Junior High School and John Muir Technical High School in Pasadena, where he lettered in football, basketball, baseball and track, before attending Pasadena Junior College — now Pasadena City College.

The $2.7 million Dreamfields complex at Gonzales Park, which the foundation completed in two phases in 2021 and 2022, is the largest in the Dodgers Dreamfields program and includes a Science of Baseball outdoor classroom.