Important Dates: 4-10: Booster meeting/DIY night @5:30pm 4-16: Sonic night (Haslet hwy 156) 4:30-9pm 5-3: EDD: Presents! 5-9: Whataburger Champion Circle - 5-8pm 5-16: STEM Showcase 5-22: STEM Senior Making Connections Day 5-23: Senior Legacy Awards & Picnic 5-24: STEM Banquet 6-3: Graduation @ 2pm
The STEM Newsletter is written and edited by students. Main Editor is Matthew Kleibrink.
Recent Happenings
The STEM Student With a Song Logan Dattola
Within the STEM Academy, there are many students that participate in extracurricular activities outside of school. From football to robotics and even Zumba classes, there are lots of ways students can learn and grow, all while having a good time. But of all of our STEM students, there is one in particular that stands out. Matthew Kleibrink is a very talented junior that is a STEM student by day and a professional musician by night. He has managed to get a song released on the iTunes and Spotify, as well as play at popular venues all around Dallas. People who have attended his gigs have more than positive things to say. Matthew Kleibrink first began playing gigs when he was invited to join a few of his friends in one. This “turned into more gigs, which eventually turned into a regular gig.” Since it's became his job, he started to do gigs solo. As of March 29, 2019, he has been doing solo gigs for 6 months. He plans on doing this “for as long as physically possible.” When he is not doing homework for school he is at home practicing, trying to add as much new material to his sets as he can. He also is learning to market himself so more people can hear about him and his music. Katelyn Ide is one of many people that regularly attend Matthew’s shows. She has attended 3 of his performances, 2 of which were at the Music City Mall in Lewisville and one at the Vault Coffee Shop in Roanoke. She has gone multiple times due to the fact that she quite enjoys the music he plays. When interviewed she said she “Loves the music he chooses to sing.” She loves most how the songs he chooses match his voice and style perfectly.” According to her, “the quality is professional.” All of this is proof that Matthew’s fan base appreciates his hard work. On top of Matthew’s shows and school and other in school activities, he is working on building a guitar from scratch. He is doing this for the Passion Project in STEM English. His project consisted of him building his own guitar and providing all the research he put into getting all the parts. This project varied from person to person, but this is what Matthew was passionate about, allowing him to do this project over a span of 3 months. This is the next step in creating his own music, making what he has done already more original. Overall, Matthew Kleibrink is a very talented young man. His ability to keep up with school work and play paying gigs is beyond respectable. Due to this being outside of school activity, the school does not accommodate the schedule of his shows. Everyone who has seen his show has had positive comments about him, and they all can't wait for what he comes up with next.
STEM Fest Jack Groves
NISD STEM Academy held STEM Fest on January 26, 2019. STEM Fest is an annual elementary engineering day designed to engage elementary school-aged students in engineering activities. The event allows these young students to experience engineering and team building. This year approximately one hundred elementary and STEM Academy students participated in a variety of challenges. The three STEM Fest activities this year were Barbie bungee jump, catapults, and building a bridge. The Barbie bungee jump uses problem-solving to make the perfect bungee for Barbie to jump without her head touching the ground. In the catapult activity, participants built catapults to launch marshmallows for distance. Shane Schnaidt, a junior STEM student, said, “The bridge building activity was the most popular event.” In the bridge building activity, students were challenged to build a load-bearing bridge. This was the first time that Shane Schnaidt and Tyler Crowther participated in STEM Fest, but both agreed that it was a fun event, and they would recommend that other STEM students participate in next year’s STEM Fest. Tyler Crowther recommends STEM Fest as a fun experience and good way to get service hours. Students interested in getting involved with the next STEM Fest should watch for announcements about the annual event in January of next year and sign up to assist.
Hayabusa 2 Joseph Kiraly The boundaries of space travel have been further expanded. Never before has such incredible progress been made, but a Japanese spacecraft has unbelievably landed 170 million miles away from Earth. The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) has sent a spacecraft, Hayabusa2, to an asteroid named Ryugu. Hayabusa2 successfully landed on the 22nd of February, about 5 years after JAXA initially launched the spacecraft. The mission of Hayabusa2 is to collect samples from 3 different locations on a Ryugu to take back to the Earth for analytical purposes. One of the samples has already been taken from the surface of Ryugu on February 22nd. On April 5th, JAXA plans to use explosives and an impactor to create a crater which Hayabusa2 can collect samples from the center of Ryugu. The return of Hayabusa2 in 2020 is certain to raise cheers across the world and reinvigorate the curiosity of scientists and engineers regarding space travel. This event would definitely lead to some competition by national aerospace administrations if any progress towards the collection of asteroids is initiated by JAXA. One teacher, Ms. Hendrix, responded to this event stating, “It would be interesting to see what the asteroids are made of. It will change the ability to retrieve rockets in space and, sadly, during war”. Ms. Hendrix and other students have talked about the importance for STEM students to learn about the current events taking place in STEM careers related to their classes. Unfortunately a publication of the Hayabusa by a large media corporation will lead to little to none increase in the number of students interested in joining the STEM academy; however, interests by aerospace students are sure to peak.
The Train Project Ryan Torres STEM Freshmen have finally finished their three-week-long project, where they were tasked to create a toy train in a 3D modeling software. This project was no easy task and required students to utilize all of their skills in Inventor (The 3D Modeling Software) that they have been developing for the past year in IED. For Mrs. Garrett, the teacher for IED class, the project was a good demonstration for real-world CAD modeling. During this project, students were given dimensions for an individual part of the train and then had three days to recreate the part in Inventor. According to Connor Armstrong, “Some of the parts of the train were a lot more advanced than others and really tested my knowledge of inventor.” After creating the ten individual parts for the toy train, students then had to “animate” the train to move on a toy track using certain constraints in Inventor. The final part of the project, students was tasked to make their own modifications to the toy train and really make it their own. Overall, both Mrs. Garrett and Freshmen enjoyed this project with Morgan Panczyk saying that he “enjoyed remaking the train in his own way during the modifications steps.” For next year, Mrs. Garrett says that “there will be a few surprise changes to the project but overall it will the same concept”. So to next years’ Freshmen, be prepared to work on this exciting project!
STEM Passion Projects Matthew Kleibrink It’s no secret that STEM is a rigorous program. Requiring students to take extremely demanding courses along with specialized engineering classes, it can sometimes be no wonder why students begin to feel worn down after a while. Tabatha Williamson, the primary STEM English teacher, has seen this dilemma as she has made her home at Northwest over the last two years. She is determined to reinvigorate STEM students with the motivation she feels they have been lacking through her Passion Project Ms. Williamson was first inspired by Google’s “Genius Hour.” Google allowed its employees to use 20% of their time at work every week to research something that they were passionate about in hopes that it would inspire creativity. The result not only came in increased morale and creativity within the workplace but also resulted in products such as Gmail and Google News. With this in mind, Ms. Williamson set aside every Friday for her Sophomores and Juniors to work on their passion projects, which can consist of researching, building, or contacting professionals. As she is working on learning how to take care of a fish tank, I asked her about what she aims to teach with this project. “The process of learning,” she told me. “Learning can be fun. I want to teach how to be passionate about something, and that you don’t have to just go through the motions to be successful.” Just as Ms. Williamson is showing dedication towards the students, the students are showing their dedication towards their passions. Through this project, students are understanding how to enjoy the process of learning and researching and applying that newfound knowledge towards something bigger. Some students have started a 3D printing business, while some are developing new tools for everyday use. Some students, like Sarah Barnes, are working on preparing themselves for a future career. “I’ve been interested in linguistics for about 2 years, and this gave me an opportunity to learn about it,” Sarah said. She went on to tell me about her interests in potentially becoming a linguistics professor. In a matter of only a couple of months, Ms. Williamson has inspired her students to chase their dreams. It gives them a chance to let go of all of the stress of high school life and spend time on something they enjoy. If products like Gmail have come from pursuing a passion project, only time will tell what heights our STEM students will reach.
Techno Expo Carlos Cervantes Techno Expo is where students show their capabilities in technology and different inventions. Techno Expo is an event that will display the technology skills students have learned in the classroom and how they have applied it to the real world. Combined with culinary arts, photography, orchestra, and other groups, the Techno Expo hosted visitors to see students fine-tune their innovative ideas and presentation skills. The students who are presenters at the event are selected by the STEM teachers in the STEM Academy because of their innovation, uniqueness, and hard work. A Junior from the STEM Academy, Nicholas Bianco, was nominated by a STEM Teacher for Techno Expo presented his Dream Bigger project on “How can you be successful in the ever-changing world”. When asked what was Techno Expo about and his response was, “It is where teachers select students who had a good project and was about technology and get to show it off”. When asked how fun and exciting it was to go to Techno Expo he said, “Yes, I really was it was me showing off my dream job I want to do and it is something I really enjoy showing off and talking about it.” From Nick’s response, Techno Expo is more than just a showcase, students get to relay their message out into the world about their learning and the technology they used. All in all, Techno Expo is a wonderful event where STEM students are able to display their capabilities in technology and their inventions. STEM Techno Expo is a great opportunity for a student at any age.
"Google For Adults" Seminar Shane Schnaidt
The "Google For Adults" seminar was created to help adults understand and comprehend the Google ecosystem and how it ties into everyday life for their children. This event, which took place on January 24th, expands upon the Google platform and allows adults to use Google applications more efficiently. Some of these applications include Google Drive, Docs, Slides, and Sheets. Fellow STEM students were also involved in the Google For Adults" event and helped parents with questions regarding the platform as a whole, and how to get involved using Google products. Marla, a current senior in the STEM Academy, stated ¨It was pretty amazing because it showed adults how to properly use Google applications¨. She was happy helping the adults learn about the different technologies we use day after day in the academy. Current STEM Junior Morgan Smith stated, ¨It allowed parents to connect better with their students through technology¨. This event was very beneficial for adults to experience and learn about Google's innovative applications. The students were helpful and insightful when addressing issues or questions, allowing the event to flow smoothly. The adults were content with the seminar and enjoyed the experience of learning something new.
English Meets Civil Engineering & Architecture Austin Ramey Projects are a large part of the STEM Academy as a whole and they are what drive students to get better in a professional sense. Projects are the lifeblood of what keeps STEM students engaged and interested in doing something new in the academy. Projects are also what pull students into the academy in the first place from students that are both new to the district, as well as students that are coming from 8th grade to become a part of something bigger than themselves. A project like that is one that is encouraged to the teachers to engage in so that way students can expand on their ability to tie together different subjects and be able to use both parts in the project. This project is the English III and Civil Engineering Architecture crossover project. Students that are a part of both classes were tasked to pick a book for English III, read it, and analyze its characters. From there, students were then tasked with taking what they knew about the main character and being able to build a house to suit that person’s needs. This was a difficult project for most, as it required getting exactly what the character needed from the book, and applying those needs to the house that they had to 3D model with a program called Autodesk Revit. The students were then tasked with creating a hand-made model of the house to scale and be able to still have the detail from their 3D model. Mrs. Delong, the CEA teacher, was asked what to pass onto students before they came to her class. “I would like to emphasize the importance of good quality work," she responded. "Sometimes even simple designs and ideas can be more amazing than a really cool and complex idea if you can execute the quality of work you display. Remember first appearances are very important.” On top of this, some students were asked as to what they thought of the project and the difficulty of it. This is what a STEM junior in Mrs. Delong’s CEA class, John Bach, had to say about the project itself: “It was a fun project and got us to use the skills we learned in CEA and apply them.” Samuel Harper, another junior in STEM, was asked what changes he would want for the project. “I would have added more criteria and requirements, as the project was a little bit too open for interpretation,” Sam said. Projects are a large part of what STEM students do in their career in the academy and is what constantly draws students to the academy. These projects are what drive students to improve daily and get better in their own lives both in school and outside as well.
STEM Career Fields Gage Maldonado When you walk down the STEM halls, you see the red walls and the big glass windows inspiring the minds of many future engineers. Besides the fancy decorum, some other benefits of the STEM Academy are preparing you for a future in an engineering field. What you may not know is that not everyone who gets into STEM wants to pursue a career in the engineering field. When we envision a STEM career everyone thinks engineer, but some people do not know knows the other career-building components that STEM can offer and “..there are so many options and ways a student can learn that will benefit them in any career” says Mrs. DeLong, the CEA and EDD teacher in the STEM Academy. Students in STEM are aren't the only ones learning about careers and what they require, but the teachers themselves learn with their students. Teachers within the STEM Academy are excited to see and teach the fundamentals that they wish they had as a high school student and wish they could've learned here and now some “...not given the opportunity to learn AutoCAD or any of these career Career options until my senior year of high school,..but I wish we had more opportunities to learn about the real world skills before college.” There's more than career readiness in STEM its readiness for the world and life. There is a never-ending set of careers and skill sets that can be acquired for these careers and STEM allows you to experience this first hand with its projects such as Dream Bigger as well a career-oriented task and PBL management. STEM careers do not have to be defined by engineering, mathematics, or science but Mrs. DeLong said it best, “I can't just describe it one way because of all the different career options there are and how they all link together but are completely different at the same time.” STEM is not isolated to a certain career field of skill set it is a melting pot of skill, talent, ideas and advancement in the future of the world. STEM creates unlimited opportunity, not engineers it creates security in any career field pursued by a STEM student.
We Have Liftoff! Brett Zubritski Every year, our STEM Juniors embark on a journey that put all of their Aerospace skills to work. During the second semester, they are tasked with creating their own rocket, that must go an entire mile into the sky, carrying a one pound payload. They must take care of the entire process, from creating a rocket design, to ordering their parts, to finally assembling the whole thing. The first step of the project is brainstorming designs for their rocket. Everything from the biggest body components to small screws and electronics needs to be picked out and ready for order. Ryan Torres said, “This stage tested our team skills the most. Learning to put a roughly 20 man team to work is really difficult”. Once their preliminary design is done, Aerospace students have to talk to a panel of actual aerospace professionals, presenting their design to the panel and receiving valuable feedback on their designs. Unlike your average STEM presentation though, the aerospace proposals contain a large quantity of hard data that the judges have to process and use to evaluate the designs. Eventually, the designs are either approved or rejected, and teams are told what needs to be improved. Small things such as fin placement and size, too big, budget affecting questions about the payloads are all commented on and given suggestions for improvement. When asking a student, Justin Barnes, about how their feedback affected their design, they told us, “We had to entirely rework our payload and research ideas”. Talking to some of the aerospace students, they recalled the hard feedback they gained, with the judges being very blunt about what would work, and what would have to change, such as valuable information about the benefits of three or four fins, and which would work best for the project's needs. After this process, the team has to work to fix the issues in their design quickly, in order to meet the deadline for ordering their parts. Overall, this project takes every skill a STEM student learns throughout their school career and applies it in a real way, and hard feedback is essential to this. With the feedback gained from these presentations and some tweaks based on those changes, the rocket is simulated to fly far more efficiently, both in terms of height and budget, than before the design.
Chemistry Chaos Abby Hogan Chemistry is often seen as an enjoyable and interesting class in high school. Most can agree that chemistry was likely one of their favorite classes as it included many different and exciting labs. In this class, Ms. Hendrix makes chemistry even more exciting with fun labs like the pop rocket lab. During this lab, Sophomore Sophie Glenn said that the way to perform this lab was to, “take water/vinegar mixture and a film canister, then add an alka-seltzer tablet, close the lid as fast as possible, flip the canister upside down and wait”. This was not only something the students could enjoy and learn from but is apart of their most recent unit, chemical reactions. Sophie commented on this, saying, “We basically got to see actual chemical reactions because at the time we were learning about why and how certain chemicals react.” A student of Ms. Hendrix’s, Sophomore Anna Miley, was able to tell me how much she enjoyed the project stating, “It was so much fun (and) I love that lab! I got to make chemical reactions and see an immediate response that kept you on your toes.” She went on to explain exactly what she had to do in order to do the lab properly and what she learned; “It’s a fun way to learn a topic that we would have taken notes over.” Another Sophomore, Izzy Glenn, was able to talk about what she enjoyed about the lab and what she had learned from the lab, “It let us be able to see what happens with chemical reactions in real time instead of getting it explained to us. It was very fun to be able to do.” It’s fantastic to know that not only can learning be fun in the classroom, but you can depend on chemistry to take that to the next level. Not only was there a lab but there was also a competition to be done by the sophomores with the best reaction photo as possible, “Essentially the Sophomores had to get a picture of the lab and their reactions and whoever could get the best picture of their reactions as possible won the contest.” Ms. Hendrix also spoke about just how funny some of the reactions that were posted were and a copious of them can be found on Twitter where the contest took place. It’s quite entertaining to see that so many of her students were beyond surprised by the resulting “rocket-like” chemical reaction. Overall the students have all agreed that this lab was an extraordinarily joyful one and they would definitely want to do it again.
The NHS STEM Academy newsletter is created monthly by the students in the Pre-AP STEM English III class. Please bookmark the URL to view each monthly issue, as the issues are updated on this website.