Thomson Middle wins NASA grant for STEM

Thomson Middle School has been selected for a 2013 Summer of Innovation (SoI) Mini-Award. Selected by the NASA Office of Education, Thomson Middle is one of five grant recipients in the state of Georgia.

According to the NASA website, “The mini-award aspect of the SoI enables local organizations to infuse NASA-themed science, technology, engineering and mathematics, or STEM, content and activities to middle school students through existing summer and/or afterschool programs.” 

Thomson Middle School Principal Walter Stephens commented, “We are excited about this great opportunity to extend STEM activities to our students after school.  This opportunity would not have been possible if not for the hard work of my Science Department Chair, Terra McMillan. She applied for the grant and we were subsequently awarded a $2,500 grant from NASA’s Summer of Innovation program. The grant will be used to sponsor this year’s STEM club called the Tigerneers.”

The Tigerneers will meet after school once a week for an hour from September to December. Students will explore robotics programming, rocketry and solar system exploration. They will program a robot to complete tasks for senior citizens such as turning off a stove, turning on a television and

planting flowers in a garden. The students will also build a rocket using two-liter bottles and then calculate their height and speed using an Altitrack device. To learn more about space, the Tigerneers will create a three-dimensional scale model of the solar system.

HHJ News