US Army finds STEM Superstars in Maryland school

By Allison Barrow, RDECOM CERDECDecember 1, 2011

STEM Superstar Program
(Photo Credit: U.S. Army) VIEW ORIGINAL

ABERDEEN PROVING GROUND, Md. - "What do you want to be when you grow up?"

It's a question children are asked often and a U.S. Army educational outreach program hopes to increase the number of children who respond with "an engineer."

The U.S. Army Research, Development and Engineering Command's communications-electronics center, or CERDEC, piloted a science, technology, engineering and math, or STEM, program for students in first-through-fifth grade, Nov. 7-10, Hickory Elementary School, Bel Air, Md.

"Piloting a STEM program with local elementary schools allows CERDEC to demonstrate to students that engineering is an enjoyable, attainable and rewarding career path. Encouraging students to pursue science and math early in their education can help ensure our country has a competitive and successful S&T workforce in the future," said Jill Smith, CERDEC director.

The STEM Superstar program aims to teach students what an engineer is, to show how they practice science and engineering in their everyday lives and to demonstrate that engineering can be a fun and creative science, said Erica Bertoli, CERDEC Outreach Program Office team lead.

Upon hearing about the plans for this new program, the fourth grade teachers at Hickory approached Bertoli to have it piloted at their school.

"We are always looking for ways to get the students excited about learning. We have also been exploring ways to incorporate more STEM-related activities into the curriculum," said Verna Hiser, fourth grade teacher at Hickory.

"Students need STEM opportunities to learn about the world around them. Incorporating problem solving and inquiry into curricula in the form of real world problems helps students learn to think critically about their world," Hiser said. "Teaching students to problem solve and persevere will help them become global learners."

During the week-long pilot, each class received an hour-long lesson on engineering, which including participation in an "engineering mission" based on their grade level, where they were presented with a problem then given a box of arts-and-craft supplies in order to build a prototype technology to solve it.

"It was very fun making a prototype," said Tara, a fourth grader whose class was placed on a mission to create technology that would assist a superhero. "We made 'Supermom;' she can fly and walk really fast."

The first and second grade classes were given the scenario of being stuck on the moon after their spaceship stopped working, and their mission was to build something that would help their parents find them. The third grade classes' mission was to build something to defend their school from an alien attack. The fifth graders had the mission to create a technology to make the world a better place.

"The students loved the activity. They were all excited to talk about their designs," said Hiser.

"One of the things that we find when we talk to elementary students is that it's less about knowing how to do the science than it is about understanding what the science is," said Bertoli. "The idea of this program is to take something that these students are already doing; something they already love, which is using their imagination, building things, creating ideas and tying it to the idea of engineering for them, so that it gives them this whole new avenue of possibility to explore as they get older," said Bertoli.

CERDEC Outreach and the teachers from Hickory will evaluate the pilot of the program to determine what worked and what can be improved with the potential of bringing it to more schools in the future.

"Our goal is to always bring the programs to as many students as resources will allow," said Bertoli.

Related Links:

WMAR-TV coverage of STEM Superstar program pilot

U.S. Army Research, Development and Engineering Command

Communications-Electronics Research, Development and Engineering Center

CERDEC Facebook

CERDEC Flickr

Harford County Public Schools

CERDEC Twitter