STEM Story Archives - West Virginia Public Broadcasting

‘WVU Day’ At Capitol Focuses On Workforce Development

Tuesday was WVU Day at the Capitol, and the growing public, private and academic partnership in workforce development was the leading theme on display.

Adorned in blue and gold, many of the capitol rotunda displays focused on technology advancement, a key component to the state’s desire to develop a workforce ready to meet the demands of a high tech future.

However, WVU President Gordon Gee said, contrary to popular opinion, a WVU liberal arts education has not taken a back seat to workforce development.

“We’re a very balanced institution,” Gee said. “We have 300 plus programs across the spectrum, but we think that it’s important, whether you’re a liberal arts graduate, or whether you’re an engineering or STEM graduate, that you stay in West Virginia and take the jobs we have. We have over 30,000 jobs available for young people. And so that is really our focus. We can’t grow West Virginia without growing our workforce.”

Gee did agree there are two tiers to academic workforce development. The high tech tier, a high demand degree in cybersecurity for example, and the vocational trades tier, the skilled jobs on the ground that combine tech and tools at places like NUCOR Steel and Form Energy.

“Some jobs are really available for people who really just want to go out and make certain that they have a good opportunity,” Gee said. “Unlike other jobs that require a lot of education. And the thing that is very important about West Virginia is the fact that we’ve crossed the digital divide with LG coming here. We have both hands on jobs with our steel mills coming or our energy programs, but now we have cybersecurity jobs and jobs that are unusual for an energy state.“

Gee said people can expect to see a lot more public-private-educational partnerships in West Virginia’s future.

“I think it will grow because of the fact that no one has enough money to do everything,” Gee said. “What we have to do is we all have to draft off from each other. Besides, I think it’s important, with the private sector, they tell us what they need, and the public universities need to produce. And it’s that partnership that I think will prevail.”

Fairmont STEM Teams Selected To Fifth Straight National Rocketry Competition

Three STEM school teams in Fairmont have been selected to attend the nationwide American Rocketry Challenge for the fifth time in as many seasons.

Updated on Friday, April 28, 2023 at 5:17 p.m.

Three STEM teams in Fairmont have been selected to attend the nationwide American Rocketry Challenge for the fifth time in as many seasons.

Two teams from East Fairmont Middle School, alongside East Fairmont STEM, a group of high school students, are among the 100 teams selected. The teams will build and launch model rockets that carry an egg to an altitude of 850 feet and return safely as part of the competition. At its peak, the designed rocket will section off into two parts – one with the egg, and one with the rocket’s motor – and both parts must land safely with their own parachutes.

“At the competition the night before, they’ll flip a coin,” middle school team member Carson Grace said. “And that determines the height that the rockets have to go, so we have to have two different rockets ready in case for whatever height they are for whatever height they have to go.”

East Fairmont Middle School science teacher and team sponsor Barbara Pill said there’s a selection process to join the school’s STEM club – meaning it’s consistently full of dedicated students.

“They’re all goal oriented,” Pill said. “Of course, anytime you have teams, there’s not going to always be agreement on everything. But they work through and we use simulation software and make our rockets in the simulator meet the parameters that we want before we ever start building the actual rockets.”

Pill said staying calm under stress and having a clear vision of each team member’s role is what will earn them a high ranking.

“These are middle school kids, most of these students there will be high school age,” Pill said. “And these are some of our younger students. And it’s a lot of pressure.”

But for some students, the competition will be a return to one they’ve attended in years prior, and it’s a chance for some of them to build on previous showings.

“This year, I think we’re hoping to not get disqualified for the egg, we built our rocket a little differently so it’s more aerodynamic this year,” team captain Maddy Armentrout said. “I’ve always enjoyed hands-on learning. But this has been my favorite so far, because I enjoy engineering.”

If one of the teams wins out, they would earn a $100,000 cash prize and a spot in the International Rocketry Challenge in Paris this summer.

The top 25 teams will also be invited to a student workshop sponsored by NASA.

Editor’s note: This story was updated to clarify the school affiliation of the teams attending. East Fairmont STEM is a team of high schoolers not officially affiliated with East Fairmont High School.

Cross Lanes Teacher Wins Classroom Tech In CIA Competition

A Charleston area teacher has won a technology award partially sponsored by the CIA.

Tiffany Pace, a STEM educator at Cross Lanes Elementary School, was named one of the inaugural winners of the Central Intelligence Agency Mission Possible Operation Advance Technology Competition Wednesday.

The award comes with a $60,000 computer and coding lab for her Charleston classroom, as well as laptops and the choice of other STEM equipment.

Pace is one of five winners in the competition and was selected from the Southeast Region, which includes schools from Washington, D.C. to Florida, and as far west as Louisiana.

The Operation Advance Technology program aims to help improve science, technology, engineering, art and math (STEAM) education in schools and is sponsored by the CIA and managed by the Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education, with funding from the U.S. Department of Energy.

W.Va. K-12 Schools See Rise In Popularity, Access For Computer Science

A report from the West Virginia Department of Education says access to computer science courses has notably increased over the past four years. This comes after a 2019 Senate bill that had the department create a development plan in K-12 schools.

The report was given to the Legislative Oversight Commission on Educational Accountability during Sunday’s legislative interim meetings.

Erika Klose coordinates computer science initiatives for the state’s Department of Education. She says the report indicates 76 percent of West Virginia high schools are now teaching computer science courses as of 2021. That’s 30 percent higher than before the bill was passed. It is expected to increase further this school year.

“Our goal is that every high school in the state will have access to a trained computer science teacher, every middle school will have access to a trained computer science teacher,” Klose said during the meeting. “If there’s one educator in each school at each grade level, they can support those that they teach with in providing that computer science instruction.”

More than 1,100 West Virginia teachers have undergone professional development courses relating to computer science since the initiative began in 2019, including 116 high school, 181 middle school and 819 elementary school teachers.

Digital literacy classes are similarly growing in popularity, with an estimated 242 schools in West Virginia offering courses this school year after a House bill required the state Board of Education to implement the Mountain State Digital Literacy Project in 2019.

Fairmont STEM Teams Qualify For Nationwide Rocketry Contest

Two teams from East Fairmont Middle School are sending students to the final round of a nationwide rocketry competition.

The students will be competing to win The American Rocketry Challenge and a $100,000 cash prize next month. They will be among 101 teams from 27 states and are the only two qualifiers from West Virginia. A third team, nearby rocketry club East Fairmont STEM, also earned a spot as an alternate.

To qualify, the teams designed a model rocket that kept two raw eggs safe as it launched over 800 feet in the air. Barring when the event was canceled in 2020 due to COVID-19, the school has had students attend each year for the past five years.

Science teacher and team sponsor Barbara Pill says they have stayed successful because of the tools and software they are able to use.

“We use simulation software to tell us how the rocket is going to fly before we ever cut tubes to build it,” Pill said. “The students design it, I have them sketch out what they would like and go over the sketches, give them suggestions about, ‘Well, this may work, this may not work.’”

Members of the STEM clubs at East Fairmont Middle School that qualified for the American Rocketry Challenge.

The significance of being selected for the event is not lost on the students. Many of them, including seventh-grader and club member LJ Diaz, are excited to meet other students from across the nation with the same interests.

“It’s a once in a lifetime opportunity to go to nationals. And being with the STEM club is really fun,” Diaz said. “You get to see all these people that are probably smarter than me do the same thing.”

Pill’s students will be participating at an event May 14 in The Plains, Virginia to decide the top 25 teams. Those teams will be invited to submit a proposal to compete in the NASA Student Launch initiative.

NASA Education Resource Center Provides Training, Resources For Classrooms Across W.Va.

NASA’s Independent Verification and Validation program has been a vital part of some of its most high-profile missions into outer space since 1993. Located in Fairmont, the program has also been helping teachers and students across West Virginia through their Education Resource Center (ERC). More recently, the center has also begun organizing competitive robotics events for student clubs. Todd Ensign is the ERC’s program manager.

“Ten years ago, when we took on Lego League, there were probably 500 kids total involved in competitive robotics in West Virginia,” said Ensign. “Today, it’s like 5,000. So it’s a big change. And my team went from a single event that we managed, to now we manage over 40 events a year.”

Ensign estimates that in a regular year, the ERC helps around 1,000 teachers and from 12,000 to 16,000 kids. Barbara Pill is one of the many West Virginia teachers the center has worked with. Pill manages the STEM club at East Fairmont Middle School. She says the competitions are the main reason new students join her club each year.

“With the competitions, they have outreach,” said Pill. “And it starts with telling fellow students about it. So each year, I have students who hadn’t thought of being in STEM wanting to be in STEM because it sounds so cool, so much fun.”

East Fairmont Middle School science teacher Barbara Pill standing in front of her STEM club’s First LEGO League mats used for robotics competitions

By reaching out to the ERC, Pill was able to attend robotics workshops herself and bring back what she learned to her students. She was also able to use equipment the ERC loaned to her. Ensign calls this the “train-the-trainer” method.

“In this manner… we’re able to have, I think, the broadest possible impact and bring resources to parts of the state that wouldn’t otherwise…have access to them. Not every school can afford a $40,000 planetarium that they can bring in, or $20,000 classroom robots and iPads to program them with,” said Ensign.

One high school robotics team the ERC has helped is Morgantown’s Mountaineer Area Robotics, known as MARS for short. While not affiliated directly with the ERC, the center calls MARS its “house team.” It’s one of the robotics teams the ERC works closely with, and has helped mentor coaches like Paul Kritschgau.

“What they’ve done with me as a coach—I’ve never learned how to do a business plan for a coached team and things like that,” said Kritschgau. “So they’re helping support from the ground up. If you need help on a business plan for a particular aspect that you don’t have an expertise in, they can help you there.”

MARS is broken up into smaller groups that its members can join based on their interests. These include programming, electrical, mechanical, and manufacturing. Some students are even members of a group that handles the business and public outreach side of the team.

Ensign says he thinks the reason robotics has engaged so many students across West Virginia is because it aligns with the mentality of the state’s people.

“You know, if something is broken, we fix it. If a mining apparatus is damaged, we don’t have time to wait for a new part to come in from far away. We get in and work on it. And I think that that same ethic has played true in our competitive robotics teams from kindergarten all the way through college teams,” said Ensign.

Currently, the Education Resource Center is preparing to hold a student drone competition on February 25. The center says it is set to be one of the largest competitions of its kind in the country.