Science Took Over Downtown — Again
For one Saturday every year, downtown Greeley belongs to kids in safety goggles. YES!fest — the Youth Engineering and Science Festival — returned to the LINC Library Innovation Center, 501 8th Ave., and by mid-morning it had claimed just about every corner of the building: the Innovation Gallery, the Arts Studio, the Atrium, the Children's Courtyard, and the upstairs Discovery Hub were all wall-to-wall with experiments, robots, and very small people asking very big questions.
As always, the whole thing was completely free, open to all ages, with no registration — walk in, pick a booth, start building. Hundreds of families did exactly that.
Why This Festival Matters
YES!fest exists for one simple reason: to change how kids see science and engineering — not as intimidating school subjects, but as real, meaningful career paths that shape everyday life in Weld County and beyond. All day long, real engineers and scientists stood at their tables fielding questions from the very small and very curious, and kids got to think the way engineers do: work in teams, get creative, solve problems, build things that matter.
UNC Showed Up Big
The University of Northern Colorado came down the hill in force. We caught up with Jan from UNC Physics & Astronomy, one of five UNC groups exhibiting — alongside Biological Sciences, Chemistry & Biochemistry (plus the ACS Chemistry Club), Earth & Atmospheric Sciences, and the College of Natural & Health Sciences. Any kid who has ever asked "why?" one too many times found their people at that row of tables.
Who Was There
The exhibitor list read like a who's-who of Northern Colorado STEM:
- Little Shop of Physics — CSU's legendary traveling hands-on science show
- CSU College of Veterinary Medicine and the Biomedical Engineering Society
- Aims Geology, Windsor Robotics, and the Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers student chapter
- City of Greeley's Stormwater Division and Culture, Parks & Recreation
- BC Honey Hives, Greeley FFA, CSU Extension 4-H, and the Colorado Pork Council for the ag-science crowd
- The Nerd Store, Girl Scouts of Colorado, STEM 4 Kids, Poudre Learning Center, Science Matters, Colorado Odyssey of the Mind, and more
- And yes — the USS Tiburon NCC-74220, Denver's Front Range Star Trek group, boldly exhibiting where no booth has exhibited before
This year's festival was sponsored by Stantec and the HPLD Friends and Foundation.
This Is What Makes Our City Great
Think about what actually happened here: two universities, a community college, city departments, farm kids and robotics kids, a comic shop, and a Starfleet crew all gave up a Saturday — for free — so that Greeley's kids could put their hands on real science. In a building this city built for exactly this purpose. That doesn't happen everywhere. It happens here, every year, and it's one of the clearest pictures you'll find of who Greeley is when it shows up for its own.
If your crew missed it this time, circle it for next year — YES!fest is an annual tradition, and the LINC will be waiting.
Greeality TV was on the ground at YES!fest — photos from the festival floor are coming to this story soon.