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STEM students work on glider project

By: Brenna Dobransky

As gliders soar through the air, the students hoped and prayed that their gliders would be successful.  

Freshman STEM is starting a new project that some may remember as the Glider Project. This project is run by the Freshman STEM teachers Chad Palmer, Angela Beshore, Richard Talbott and Shawn Kimbrough. 

In this project, students are required to design and create a glider that is capable of holding items in which can then be directly delivered to the people who need the necessary items when other methods of delivery are unavailable.

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“At this scale, this is the first year,” Palmer said. “We’ve piloted this [project] last year because we knew we couldn’t do catapult golf anymore just because our STEM numbers are growing so big that we wouldn’t have anywhere to put 50 some catapults.”

With this being the first official year executing the glider project, there will be many new aspects, challenges and questions like what is the true effect this project will have on the students and in their everyday life. 

As more and more natural disasters occur people are left homeless and without the necessities needed for survival such as food, water filtration, blankets, and many other items. 

“I think the glider project is a project to get students to think, to come up with different solutions to a problem of how to get much-needed aid be it medical,” Palmer said. “Be it water filtration, directions, GPS units to areas that have just experienced some sort of disaster so through the glider project they’re able to get much-needed emergency aid a lot quicker and in mass quantities.”

Many areas don’t have the availability of the supplies needed to disperse out to the areas that need it. 

“Looking at what happened to Puerto Rico I mean that country was crippled and they didn’t have the infrastructure to send much-needed supplies,” Palmer said. 

If a glider were to be created that could send items to places like the Bahamas, Florida, Puerto Rico, etc after horrific events such as a hurricane, this could help many people. 

The purpose of this project is to get the students to think outside the box, test the limits, and find new solutions to problems

 “The first problem is truly getting you to think outside the box and to be able to take risks,” Palmer said. “Normally, students don’t want to take a risk because they’ve been punished for taking risks and you know I think getting you guys to do that because you’ve been so restricted in school, I think that’s the biggest hurdle we have to overcome.” 

The overall project consists of many aspects that students will be able to utilize and will be able to better take the risks needed to understand and accomplish tasks while also being able to think outside the box and come up with new ideas that could possibly end up helping a lot of people. 

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STEM students work on glider project