An engineered bazooka designed to launch candy, a 3D-printed novel board game, an ecological experiment with fish, and a magnetically powered trebuchet. You may guess that these are all projects designed by undergraduate or even graduate level students for a class. However, these projects are the curiosity-driven creations of middle schoolers as part of the STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Mathematics) TRAIN (Transdisciplinary Research Across Institutional Near-peers) program, which just completed its third successful year.