Sussex Elementary Opens a Saber STEAM Studio for Robotics and 3D Printing

Sussex Elementary School now has a room for the work that usually happens on a cart or a special day. The McKenna Institute says the Saber STEAM Studio — science, technology, engineering, arts, and mathematics — is a dedicated space at the K–5 school on Duke Street for robotics, 3D printing, green-screen work, and other hands-on digital tools.

The school invited the town in on Wednesday, September 23, from 5 to 7 p.m., with remarks at 5:30. Students ran interactive demonstrations. The listing credits the same two UNB partners the institute named: the McKenna Institute and the Promise Partnership.

Teachers tried the room first

Educators got the preview at this summer’s Tech for Teaching conference, which the institute hosted at the school. That conference is already part of the institute’s school-system work — an annual session for teachers who want digital tools they can actually run, not another slide deck about “innovation.”

The institute’s video from the conference shows teachers using the studio the way their students will: building a bridge that maps onto math curriculum, then a green screen for language-arts storytelling. Graduated Grade 5 students came back to teach the teachers — including what they learned and how they learned it.

The kit list is concrete. Robotics and 3D printing sit next to coding, internet-safety lessons, and loose STEAM materials meant for exploring rather than a single worksheet. Sussex Elementary is a K–5 school in Anglophone South (ASD-S), 25 Duke Street — the same district Promise Partnership already names as a partner, from St. Stephen through Sussex.

A needs assessment, then a room

The studio did not appear as a branded pop-up. The institute’s video traces it to a Promise Partnership needs assessment after space opened up in the building — another elementary school had been housed there — and to a local argument that digital literacy had to live in the school, not only on visiting days.

Promise Partnership is a UNB program, now under the Integrated Health Initiative, that started as Saint John mentoring in 2009 and later added digital literacy. A 2022 Joyce Family Foundation gift funded that digital-literacy push with the McKenna Institute. In 2024 the partnership put Kindergarten-to-Grade 2 digital literacy into the school day at Hazen White–St. Francis in Saint John (laptops, tablets, block programming, 3D printing) and expanded to Moncton in 2025. Sussex is the same work in a rural K–5, with a permanent room instead of a shared timetable.

The McKenna post says the Saber studio was made possible with support from the River Philip Foundation. That is the credit for this room. The same foundation led a $1-million, three-year Rural Strategy for Digital Transformation at the institute in June 2024 — STEAM scholarships, delivery-partner support, and community events for smaller centres. The studio announcement does not say this room is that million dollars, and it should not be read that way.

Same partners, a room that stays put

This is a different shape from the institute’s other school-facing programs. TeXplore fills non-instructional days across the province — 17 events and more than 150 students in the 2025–26 pilot, some of them already run by Promise Partnership with Lego, magnetic tiles, and Sphero Mini robots. McKenna Connect puts UNB student mentors next to adults; one of its field notes was a password reset at the Sussex Regional Library.

The studio video says the room is meant to host both: TeXplore on days the school is closed, and Connect sessions that reach seniors in the community. Staff also talk about an after-school club, March-break camps, evening programs, and — over years, not this term — a community hub where people can come in and make things. Those are plans, not a calendar.

A dedicated studio does not, by itself, change whether Sussex students later show up in UNB computer science or a Fredericton cybersecurity shop. What it does change is the default: the 3D printer and the robots are in the building on an ordinary Tuesday, not only when a visiting program parks in the gym.

Sources

• McKenna Institute: Saber STEAM Studio announcement — September 24, 2026: studio at Sussex Elementary; McKenna Institute and Promise Partnership; robotics, 3D printing, other digital tools; Tech for Teaching preview; River Philip Foundation support; accompanying video
• Saber STEAM Studio Open House — Your Saint John — September 23, 2026, 5–7 p.m. at 25 Duke Street; remarks at 5:30; student demonstrations; Promise Partnership and McKenna Institute credit
• Sussex Elementary School profile — K–5, English/EFI, ASD-S, 25 Duke Street, Sussex
• About the Promise Partnership — UNB — program history, digital-literacy initiative, Joyce Family Foundation gift, ASD-S partnership, McKenna Institute partnership
• The McKenna Institute — institute mandate
• UNB: $1-million Rural Strategy for Digital Transformation led by River Philip Foundation — June 12, 2024: $1 million over three years, rural STEAM scholarships and delivery-partner support; not a dollar figure for this studio
• McKenna Institute's TeXplore — NB Tech News — prior Promise Partnership / non-instructional-day programming
• McKenna Connect — NB Tech News — prior Sussex adult digital-literacy work