Teachers Take The AROW Challenge At Coast Guard Academy

Rescuing survivors on a distressed vessel. Stopping a drug runner. Cleaning up an oil spill. All of these Coast Guard responsibilities, were put in the hands of a group of teachers on Thursday afternoon, albeit in miniature.

The is welcoming 31 teachers from 11 different states as well as Puerto Rico to the Engineering Challenge for the 21st Century Program this week. On Wednesday, teams worked to create the swiftest boat out of a piece of foam board as well as electrical and mechanical components. Today, the task was to outfit the same boat to perform as many tasks as possible as part of the Academy Robotics On Water challenge.

“You have to make a boat that can do multiple missions, kind of like the Coast Guard,” said Lt. Commander Greg Barbiaux, an instructor in the management department.

Water tanks set up in a gymnasium were packed with emergencies. White plastic balls, representing survivors of a calamity, floated in the water or sat on the deck of a wooden vessel, waiting to be rescued and taken to the section of the tank representing a hospital. A ball rolling on a mechanized track represented a drug runner, who could be knocked off or captured and brought to “jail” area. Several yellow balls floating within a containment rope represented an oil spill, and could be brought to a “recycling” area.

Elsewhere, there were two target zones to place buoys, a lighthouse which could be activated, and a toy helicopter set up with a mechanism allowing it to be dropped onto the deck of the boat. The successful completion of each task was worth a varying number of points. Flubbing certain things, such as dropping the helicopter into the water or leaving yellow balls outside of the containment area, took away points.

Each team gets two rounds to try their boat out. Aaron Parker, of the academy’s office of inclusion and diversity, said teams have to strategize to gather the most points within the four minutes the boats are allowed to roam.

“It’s nearly impossible to do everything,” he said.

The challenge promotes the academic subjects of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. Earlier in the week, the program demonstrated bottle rockets and fuel cell cars. The goal is to help teachers incorporate the methodologies included in the week’s program into their own curriculum.

“Kids would absolutely love doing something like this. It’s fun,” said Ben Roose, an eighth grade science teacher at Deal Middle School in Washington, D.C. “The problem is, it’s expensive.”

Roose, who coaches a robotics team at the school, said the event is helpful in coming up with ideas for designing labs. He said programs such as the one offered by the Coast Guard Academy are good for promoting STEM topics.

“Science often takes a back seat to English and math,” he said.

Sue Brown, an applied science teacher at the Mauro-Sheridan Science, Technology and Communications School in New Haven, said she was looking for concepts to bring back to the classroom. She said teams for the challenge were grouped by personality type, and that her own team was more of a novice one when it came to engineering.

“We just made it work yesterday, and today we have to choose which challenge will give us the most points,” she said.

Brianna Roberts, a teacher at Le Jardin Academy in Kailua, Hawaii, said the program will help her develop a robotics team and network with teachers. Irina Lavruk, a math teacher at the , said people from the academy visited in the spring to host a similar project. She said the topics can easily be incorporated into classroom lessons.

“It’s good when the teachers also try hands-on activities,” she said.

The program is funded in part by the Connecticut College of Technology's Regional Center for Next Generation Manufacturing, a National Science Foundation Advanced Technology Center.