B2e STEM CLUB
The Metro/Battelle engineering club is off to a great start this year. A slight reorganization took place. (Battelle staff are not familiar with that concept, right?)
We realized that a club for aspiring engineers already existed at Metro—the Pre-College Initiative of the National Society of Black Engineers has the largest chapter in the country here at our school.
It only made sense to combine the two clubs and form the B2e STEM Club, and to springboard the Battelle Engineering Experience into other schools by providing support to the NSBE PCI chapters.
Chris Brandon and Steve Madland, the club leaders from Battelle, planned an exciting kick-off meeting. This year, the club will be learning robotics and entering the NSBE and FIRST Robotics competitions. FIRST was founded by Dean Kamen, the entrepreneur who invented the Segway human transporter. What better way to illustrate engineering than to bring in a really cool invention like that for the students to see in person?
It turns out that COSI has one—so they brought it over for the meeting. We also learned that Kathy Sullivan, former astronaut and current director of the Battelle Center for Math and Science Education Policy, is a personal friend of Dean Kamen.
Kathy was more than happy to make a grand entrance on the Segway and to talk to the club about ideas, discovery and invention. As she spoke, I could picture the “light bulbs” above the heads of our future innovators!
-- Posted October 3, 2007 --
Diana Wolterman is on a two-year special assignment to Metro High School, where she will play a key role in furthering the collaboration between the private sector and education, including special projects to connect Battelle staff with the activities in the school, assisting with tours and visits, developing and implementing new experience-based curriculum support, and helping to document the process of creating a new STEM-focused learning experience. Diana also will document Battelle’s successes and missteps at Metro to help the organization learn from the experience and make good decisions going forward at Metro and in other educational activities.