Page 26: of Marine Technology Magazine (May 2011)

26 MTR May 2011 to discover the excitement of

STEM as a potential future career path. The focus of the program is to introduce STEM to a diverse population, so participating in the

National Challenge will be stu- dents who have been directly exposed to STEM through

SeaPerch and are coming from all over the country - from inner city

Baltimore to rural Mississippi to

Native American reservations in

Minnesota to Alaska and Hawaii.

This national event will provide an opportunity for the students to compete with their peers in a series of underwater challenges, and to present their designs and adaptations in a juried poster event. Later they will visit the Independent Seaport

Museum (ISM) and attend the gala Awards Dinner there that evening. Prior to the Awards Dinner, the students will have the opportunity to take part in tours of the his- toric ships, USS OLYMPIA and the BECUNA (SS-319), and view the many exhibits at the ISM. The next day, stu- dents will attend the Intelligent Ship Symposium (ISS IX) sponsored by the Delaware Valley Section of ASNE. The hosts of the Challenge encourage their members and the general public to visit the Challenge in Philadelphia on

Tuesday, May 24, to find out what the SeaPerch program is all about and to cheer on the students com- peting for prizes. This will be a great opportunity for many to meet first-hand our next genera- tion of scientists and engineers, to witness the students’ enthusiasm and to share in the excitement of the pool and poster competitions.

The Challenge is taking place at

Drexel University’s Daskalakis

Athletic Center at 33rd and

Market St. in Philadelphia. The day starts with opening ceremonies at 8:45 a.m., immediately followed by the students’ pool competition and the poster presentations. Susan Nelson, Executive

Director of SeaPerch, summed it up by saying, “the first

National SeaPerch Challenge is the fulfillment of ONR’s vision to showcase future STEM talent on the national stage, and this particular event would not have been pos- sible without the generosity of the NEEC grant.

Experiencing in person the benefits of hands-on learning, innovation and competition and sharing the excitement and enthusiasm generated by these students is be proof positive of the resounding success of the ONR-funded

SeaPerch Educational Outreach Program.”

MIT Origins of SeaPerch

SeaPerch is an underwater Remotely Operated Vehicle (ROV) assembled by students as part of a STEM (Science,

Technical, Engineering, and Mathematics) curriculum. As student teams build the SeaPerch from kit components, they follow a build curriculum that teaches scientific and engineering concepts while encouraging students to work together in teams, and, most importantly promotes science and engineering as fun.

Created by Harry Boehm and Vickie Jensen, authors of “How to Build an Underwater Robot,” the SeaPerch ROV was created as hands-on build curriculum by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and was initially funded by the Navy’s Office of Naval Research (ONR) through MIT as a teacher-training program. The program was introduced to teachers in New England and expanded to several other school districts outside of the immediate area. The Navy’s Office of Naval Research (ONR), through the National Naval Responsibility for Naval Engineering (NNRNE), providing an initial seed grant aimed at determining SeaPerch’s potential to play a larger part in its

Outreach efforts. This initial project was deemed successful, and ONR has continued to broaden its support of the

SeaPerch program, which has now become their signature K-12 Outreach program.

The Society of Naval Architects and Marine Engineers (SNAME), a professional technical society with a strong his- tory of commitment to education and scholarship in the maritime industry, was tapped by ONR to lead the SeaPerch effort and determine the program’s viability for expansion to a national program. The SNAME/ONR partnership began in the fall of 2007 with just over 700 students and 38 teachers trained. At the end of 2009, just two and a half years later, 6,378 students and 257 teachers had participated in the program, doubling each year. “The first National SeaPerch

Challenge is the fulfillment of

ONR’s vision to showcase future STEM talent on the national stage, and this particular event would not have been possible without the generosity of the NEEC grant.”

Susan Nelson,

Executive Director, SeaPerch,