STEM Club (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math) starts as a middle school elective that encourages students to dive deeper into hands on technical and engineering skills. Over the course of the semester, students build on their knowledge by constructing underwater robots. Our STEM club competes regionally with our underwater robots each year. This gives the students experience solving problems related electrical/mechanical engineering, buoyancy, density, and driving ROV’s. Along with these tasks students also have to navigate working and solving real problems in small groups, which is a valuable experience by itself. Currently the course is only offered as an middle school elective with afterschool lab days scheduled on a “as need’ basis.
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Middle School and High School STEM Program
RMA’s STEM Program has undergone some expansion this year with the
edition of the STEM Team, and the STEM closet. The STEM team is an
afterschool extracurricular opportunity for students in middle and high
school that will provide students with leadership
opportunities, group work skills, and competitive academics. The Stem
Team is gearing up for the 2019-2020 school year when they will be
preparing to compete in the MATE Regional Underwater robot competition.
The STEM Team will be coached by Thomas Wilcox, a lead underwater
robotics engineer with General Dynamics, and will be supported by the
RMA teacher advisors. The other edition to the STEM program was the STEM
Closet in the Middle School Building which is a combination work and
storage space for our STEM gear. The River Mill STEM students have had a
blast this year working with circuits, mechanical and physical
engineering kits, and programing. With our heightened organization of
the STEM program we are looking forward to a strong start of the
2019-2020 school year!
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Written by Hope Andrews, STEM Team Captain
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