Excited chatter and laughter filled an activity room at the Boys & Girls Club of Columbus Wednesday morning. The collective sound was positive — made moreso because it came from 20 or so teenagers some might expect to be wasting a summer day sleeping, or hunched over a device of some kind. Not this group. Divided into teams, they focused on the challenge at hand — building small-scale model roller coasters that would carry a “passenger” (in this case, a marble) from start to finish safely.
The large, bright room seemed to undulate with tubes of neon green and sea blue foam pipe insulation as teens tested out design ideas for the STEM project given them by visiting instructor Angela Verdell. STEM stands for science, technology, engineering and mathematics.
“What we’re trying to do is just come out and help the kids avoid so much ‘brain drain’ over the summer, specifically in the area of STEM,” said Verdell, who is director of diversity programs and student development in Mississippi State University’s Bagley College of Engineering. “I’m working with them on hands-on engineering and STEM activities that will tie into some of those courses from school.”
The Boys & Girls Club Summer Camp teens enjoy the challenge, problem-solving with concepts like gravity, friction, kinetic and potential energy, motion and velocity.
“One of the major things we strive to do is make it engaging so that kids are really interacting and even not realizing that they’re touching on some heavy technical things,” said Verdell.
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“How are you gonna get that marble to go up that tube?” one teen asked the rest of her team. She had spotted the design flaw in a flat approach to a steep incline in their roller coaster prototype. Back to the drawing board. Everywhere in the room, other teams worked through the same process, making sketches, twisting insulation, trying to think like an engineer designing a full-size coaster.
“Our purpose is to make a roller coaster that is safe and sturdy,” said 14-year-old Aleyah Davis, who attends Columbus Middle School. “If the marble falls off, people fall off.”
Verdell and her assistants moved around the room, offering guidance when needed.
Jada Boone of Jackson graduated from Mississippi State in biomedical engineering in May. This summer, she is helping Verdell with visits to Boys & Girls Clubs and assisting with similar youth projects at the Columbus Housing Authority.
“I would have really liked to have had something like this when I was younger; I wasn’t sure at all what engineering even was then,” Boone said.
The outreach is possible in part because of grants that fund programs like “STEM on the Move.”
“The purpose is to take those opportunities to kids who may not have the chance to come to (the MSU) campus during the summer, to be able to engage them in STEM activities,” Verdell explained.
Quindarius Roland, 15, felt confident his team’s prototype will be ready to pass inspection Monday, when Verdell returns to give all the roller coasters the “marble test.”
“It’s the last step, when we talk about what could you have done to make this better, or safer,” said Verdell.
With a broad smile, Roland said, “On our roller coaster, we start off fast and thrilling, and end calm, so your heart rate can slow down.”
His mother, Lutece Roland, is pleased to see Quindarius, as well as his two younger brothers, getting so much out of the summer camp.
“It gives teens something positive to do besides being in the streets, or possibly getting into something they have no business in … 15 and 16 year-old kids are curious,” she said. “I love the programs, the kids. I go over sometimes and sit in every now and then.”
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STEM activities go on throughout the summer session, facilitated by the club’s Volunteer Coordinator Samantha Rogers and weekly visits by Verdell.
“It’s important to have a STEM focus because it gives the kids an opportunity to understand different parts of engineering and mathematics,” said club Unit Director Brittany Turner. “They have to use critical thinking, and it helps when school starts.”
Boys & Girls Club Summer Camp encompasses a variety of other daily activity for about 140 youth from kindergarten through 12th grade. A sampling includes Fire Academy with Columbus Fire and Rescue, weekly motivational programs with staff volunteers from Salvation Army, water safety with Ranger Randi from the U.S. Corps of Engineers Tenn-Tom Waterway, reading programs, ball games, swimming, visits to the library and other field trips. As a whole, summer at the Boys & Girls Club strives to engage and stimulate. It’s definitely Verdell’s goal in the STEM sessions, too.
It’s always a positive when “you can get kids excited about something they probably never spend a whole lot of time thinking about,” she said.
“One of the things I see in my job is you have a significant gap in the number of minority kids who are pursuing STEM disciplines, and one of the differences is exposure. They haven’t been exposed,” Verdell continued. “I’m looking maybe 10 or 15 years down the line, when these kids are coming to MSU to major in engineering. You have to start that early.”
Jan Swoope is the Lifestyles Editor for The Commercial Dispatch.
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