WRITTEN BY JOSH DEAKIN
The STEM Program at Schenck High School has grown substantially since its inception in 2020. The co-teaching team of Travis Gallagher and William Cousins provide students with the opportunity to learn a variety of STEM-related skills such as computer programming, coding, and engineering using 3D printers and a CSC Machine.
The program is a team effort between Gallagher and Cousins who wrote several grants to get the project going.
“It was Will’s idea initially, but became a joint effort on what to do with the money,” said Gallagher, a science teacher. “We started off wanting to try to figure out 3D printing and it snowballed from there.”
Gallagher said their goal was to offer students an advanced STEM education in the rural area of East Millinocket.
“Integration between tech and high schoolers is going to be hard to separate,” Gallagher said. “The more hands-on material and tech usage the kids get, like programming and circuits, the more likely students will become invested in STEM fields.”
Each year, the teaching duo develop projects to assist in the learning of these topics.
“The whole purpose of this is to make sure students have access to technology — things they wouldn’t have access to in a typical classroom,” Gallagher said. “We’ve had a lot of students say they enjoy the access, and the students are excited to be in there. That’s what I care about more than anything is that the students are excited to be there.”
This year’s project is developing a floatation device for someone who may be in danger of drowning.
“An incident had happened on the lake and the thought of having my loved one being searched for underwater was a terrible thought,” Cousins said, “so what a great project for a tech class to develop an underwater floatation device to assist in a search and rescue recovery process.”
The project includes the fabrication of a plastic box, programming an Arduino microcontroller with a pressure sensor, and deploying a gas-filled balloon to assist in search and rescue.
“Getting an automated device brings in a lot of challenges for the students, including physics underwater, flow rates of gasses, and other engineering aspects to consider,” Cousins said. The floatation device allows the class to use their knowledge from previous education to assist in the engineering.
The class is taught how to manipulate coding languages and various circuitry parts to make this project come alive. As a bonus, the coding adds an invaluable layer to the students’ toolbox for when pursuing a higher education.
“There have been numerous students who have gone on to pursue engineering who have stated they’ve used what we taught them during their college classes,” Gallagher said.
The students developing the device are a team of seniors and juniors who have all taken high-level mathematical courses. Careful planning is necessary to ensure the components work together and function to service the purpose intended. So far, there have been seven different versions of the device since the start of the school year.
“It’s an iterative design — you make a version, you learn a lot on the way to make the version, you see what works and what doesn’t, and then you make a new one,” Gallagher said. “The whole class is designed where you fail a lot but learn a ton along the way.”
The team is approaching the finishing line, and hope to perform practical testing of the finished project within the next few months with plans to have a finished product by the end of the school year.
