Shown above the EHS STEM Racing Challenge team members
who were on hand for Monday evening’s meeting are from left
to right, in the back row, Ms. Cianchetta, Ms. Seiders, Brandon
Raso, Nicolas Soloman, Diego Duarte, and Ms. Goodman and
in front Jacky Aguilar, Rihabe Oulal, Valder Neto and Natalia
Alvarez.
A group of students and teachers from Everett High School will be heading to North Carolina next month, May 15 to May 17, to take part in the TEN80 STEM team NASCAR Racing Challenge, which has some of Everett’s high school kids building and racing model NASCAR cars, in an effort to apply what they’ve learned about science, technology, engineering and math.
Several of the students, accompanied by their teachers, made a brief presentation to the Everett School Committee, before asking the board’s permission to travel out of state and compete at the National Competition of Racing Challenge teams.
According to Everett Schools Curriculum Director Janice Gauthier, the EHS STEM team is currently anked12th out of 107 teams nationally and has recently taken several first place awards at other competitions.
In helping to make the presentation to the School Committee, team member Jacky Aguilar explained to the School Committee that the Everett team is working on four specific projects as part of its racing team, including studying gear ratios, developing an autonomous car that can steer itself around the track using sensors, aerodynamics for the race car and developing a bio fuel to run the car on.
Joining Aguilar in making the presentation were Rihabe Oulal and Valder Neto. Oulal explained the formation of the club and overall goals, while Neto explained his work with the autonomous car and offered a brief display of his “driving” ability.
All of this is impressive for a team that wasn’t even in the planning stages just a few years ago.
In 2012, students and teachers from Everett High School attended the first state STEM Expo to learn how to start a team. That led to the formation of an afterschool STEM team and the development of a high school STEM class and curriculum that now has over 30 students and four teachers.