The following is a guest post written by Dr. Tim Lampe, Senior Associate Athletic Director and Adjunct Professor for the Center for Sport Leadership at Virginia Commonwealth University.
This spring, the Richmond International Raceway (RIR) hosted the 3rd Annual RIR STEM Education Day event. Using a NASCAR Sprint Cup Series race as the backdrop to the event, community partnerships in the Richmond, Virginia area, including RIR, joined together to provide local middle school students with a great race week experience as well as an interactive hands-on STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) education program.
Since the inception of the event three years ago, RIR, Arena Racing USA, and the Center for Sport Leadership (CSL) at Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) have been successful with picking up solid educational partnerships with the Richmond MathScience Innovation Center. These two partners have firmly helped legitimize the event and validate the educational STEM value this program provides students.
Collectively, this group of highly motivated community members have collaboratively worked to create an authentic, hands-on, and engaging educational experience for seventh grade students in the Henrico County Public Schools. A driving force behind the creation of this event was the overall belief and pursuit of the following three goals: to create interest in STEM related educational opportunities, to create awareness of STEM-related careers in sport, and to connect classroom content from seventh grade math and science classes with real-life hands-on activities. Moreover, an underlying theme that ran parallel to these goals was the conscious effort to attract females and minorities to STEM-related education majors and STEM-related careers.
While much work still remains to achieve these goals, progress was made this year with the addition of the Society of Black Engineers, a VCU student group through the School of Engineering. Also adding substantial value to the event was a group of female STEM education experts from NASA. Their combined knowledge of STEM and racing, specifically speed and speed reduction, helped strengthen the connection to classroom content.
With the MathScience Innovation Center leading the way with their creative hands-on learning activities, such as the banking, aerodynamics, and tire temperatures stations, the society of Black Engineers also added an engaging activity station that demonstrated combustion and NASA added a demonstration on “drag” which showed the similarities between rockets and racecars.
The Science Museum of Virginia also participated in the event and added an activity station that had students thinking about the use of renewable energy to produce power. The primary example was how a wind-powered car traveled 3,000 miles using a battery that was charged by the wind.
Henrico County Public Schools Career and Technical Education (CTE) also provided an activity station related to electrical engineering that was administered by high school students. In all, there were twenty hands-on activity stations for the students to engage with and learn about the many STEM aspects of racing.
Students were also given access to the track where they learned first-hand about the Steel and Foam Energy Reduction (SAFER) barrier system, the purpose of banking, and how the intricate nature of the timing system works. The atmosphere at the track added to the student’s excitement. Race team “haulers” were being lined up on the massive infield as television productions crews set up camera locations throughout the venue. There was a feeling around the raceway complex that something big was about to happen and the students felt that they were a part of the action.
This atmosphere has proven to be extremely important for students in that it makes the overall STEM Education day experience a memorable one. A lot of thought and attention goes in to planning this event to be sure that students are not being “talked at” or lectured during their STEM experience. The combination of the race-week experience and hands-on activities brings the event alive, making for a positive experience that students remember in detail.
At the conclusion of the event year, the Henrico County Public Schools CTE program collects data from student participants through a survey presented by the CSL program at VCU. The two-part survey asks students about their interest in a STEM-related career as well as a semantics questionnaire that asks students how they feel about each of the four STEM components; science, technology, engineering, and math. The results of the survey help school administrators gauge what their students think about STEM-related education and careers from different perspectives; primarily their interest in STEM education, interest in STEM careers, and family support of STEM education.
The RIR STEM Education event has proven to be successful and has provided educators valuable information about their students; however, none of this would be possible without the collaborative interest and investment from the various community partners. With each passing year they look to improve and enhance the student experience in hopes of creating a higher interest level in STEM education and careers among middle school students. The goal is to use sport as a valuable “hook” to grab the attention of students and create an attractive way to have them understand that STEM is not an intimidating term.
For more information about the program, ideas for future events, or if you would like to see the results from the survey, please contact Dr. Tim Lampe at tclampe@vcu.edu.