26 minute read
Excellence in STEM Programming
Science instructor Troy Lanier with Zoe Schaffer
STEM
PROGRAMMING AT ITS BEST
St. Stephen’s instructors are known for challenging themselves to develop new and creative ways to provide transformational learning experiences for students. They incorporate new technologies in their classrooms and work with peers in other departments to integrate coursework from varying disciplines. Whether they teach social science, poetry, history or music, they strive to bring lessons to life to enhance students’ knowledge and understanding of our world.
Perhaps no greater example of this cross-curricular approach to learning exists on The Hill than within our STEM programming, which provides an interdisciplinary approach to exploring topics in science, technology, engineering and math.
We hope the following stories provide a glimpse into the daily activities of our amazing faculty and students, as well as a deeper understanding of how our school community fulfills our mission to prepare students to live meaningful lives and enrich our world.
SHOWCASING EMERGING TECHNOLOGIES IN THE CLASSROOM
—nicole wortham, ph.d., educational technology coordinator
Developing courses and programming that give students opportunities to dive deeply into emerging technologies and computer sciences has been a goal of mine since I arrived on campus five years ago. However, to develop inspiring courses for students, it has been critically important to listen to what they want and then look for meaningful ways to provide ways for them to expand their knowledge.
The Maker Class is a perfect example of collaborative programming in the STEM fields of science, technology, engineering and math. It used to be a class taught by a cohort of teachers and offered students opportunities to have exposure to prototyping tools, such as 3D design and printing, robotics and coding to name a few.
Not long after creating the Maker Class, as science instructor Troy Lanier concurrently developed the robotics course and as the Project and Idea Realization Lab (The PIRL makerspace) grew, it made sense to shift the class focus a bit. First, we wanted it to be a place where students could learn and take advantage of the incredible prototyping machines in our makerspace, including three 3D printers, an Epilog Laser cutter, a ShopBot desktop and desktop MAX CNC router, and any hand-held or power tool and accessory students would need to build whatever they imagined. In addition, we wanted it to be a place where students could bring ideas and concepts and literally build them into existence.
Throughout the last four years, it has been tremendous to see what has come out of the makerspace. Particularly impressive has been the work of 10th grader Jorik Dammann, who is now taking the course for a second year and who is well versed in using all of the tools and machines in the room. He is currently working on two
PHOTOS LEFT TO RIGHT: Beck Arnow and Addie McClish; Emily Wilschetz and Emily Young
ROBOTICS
Robotics student Jorik Dammann has been working in The PIRL makerspace to create a robot with movable arms that can solve a Rubik’s cube.
Anish Palakurthi | MyWorld A networking app that uses gamification to help reduce users’ carbon footprints. The networking component prioritizes an individual’s improvement rather than competition against others.
projects, one in the concept stage and the second in iteration, a process where the creator uses feedback and failure to make changes to an initial prototype. Currently in iteration is a robot that will automatically solve a Rubik’s cube. Dammann started the process by working with the programming languages Arduino and Python to develop the code to power his robot; a user inputs the faces of the unsolved cube into a graphical user interface (GUI), and then the program reads the input and uses the algorithm to direct the robot to manipulate the faces of the cube in order to solve it. In order to see this concept to realization, Dammann has honed his 3D design and printing skills, worked with the laser cutter, and refreshed his soldering skills.
Still in concept form is a programmable airport-style flip board. Dammann’s flip board will have space for 12 letters and numbers, which will be programmed through an app to display content, whether that be the date and time or a quick reminder, such as “STUDY.” In order to see this idea through to realization, Dammann will use CNC routers to build a mountable housing for the flip board and the 3D printer to create connection pieces, and he will need to challenge his coding skills in programming this device to work with an app. Finally, he will need to build that app for the end-user to control the flip board. Dammann’s ideas bring together all the facets of both the tools and the skills used in The PIRL and show how intersectional the work in this space has become.
As demonstrated in the flip board project, there has been tremendous excitement and interest from students in developing apps for cell phones in the past few years due to the ubiquitous nature of mobile devices and computing. What started two years ago as an independent study with three seniors has developed into a full-credit math course that attracts students of all ages and coding backgrounds. In this class, students use the designthinking process to identify a problem in their daily lives. That problem is then researched, along with existing solutions, and then students ideate to come up with ways that an app might offer a solution to this problem. From there, students create a rapid prototype of their app using a drag-and-drop app development program and use that wireframe to collect feedback. Students then take their rapid prototype and feedback and code their app using XCode and SwiftUI for publication in the Apple App Store.
Each year the class projects are completely different, because the problems students identify are unique to their lives and interests. In years past, students created SavvyApp, a voting app that worked much like a dating app, swiping left or right on issues that are important (or not) and being matched with a political candidate who most closely aligned with the voter’s viewpoint. This year, students in the class have continued to be exceptionally innovative with their app development ideas.
APP DEVELOPMENT
Rafael Almazan | Centered
A focus/study app that gives users points based on the length of time they do not use their phone. It also tracks the user’s productivity and generates reports based on how long and effectively they focused.
Anish Palakurthi, a 12th grader, has used his interest in environmental preservation to design MyWorld, an app that uses gamification to help users reduce their carbon footprint. A user takes an initial assessment to determine areas where they can impact their carbon footprint and provides suggestions to help decrease their use. Improvement comes in the form of a tree seedling that grows over time as the user makes continued improvements. MyWorld also has a networking component that extends the gamification to allow users to compete against friends. One of the most intriguing and unique features of the MyWorld network gamification feature is that users do not compete for overall carbon footprint, but on overall self-improvement. When asked about this choice, Palakurthi stated that he did not want a user to feel shamed by their carbon footprint, which he feels is a very personal identifier, but instead to feel compelled and challenged to make improvements.
Aside from curricular opportunities to explore emerging technologies, The PIRL is open for students to do “drop in work” during the school day. Ninth grader Alexander Agrawal has a passion for building drones that defy the “rules” of those that are commercially manufactured and produced. He has spent extensive time pursuing his passion and, prior to developing his own in The PIRL, has had to seek out other people to design and print the highly specialized parts required for the machines he wants to create.
However, this year Agrawal has been able to come to The PIRL during his lunch periods to produce some of these parts on his own. He has acquired 3D design and printing knowledge, but also has been able to share his passion and knowledge with faculty and other students who have been in the space for work of their own—designing and printing parts of an embroidery machine, laser cutting architectural models, using a CNC router to engrave a design into wood. These spontaneous collaborations help grow our collective understanding of the limitless nature of what can be imagined and actualized when students are given the opportunity to create using these emerging technologies. •
APP DEVELOPMENT
Michelle Liang | Foodify Users input foods and ingredients they have on hand, and the app provides recipe suggestions for what they can make from those provided.
APP DEVELOPMENT
Luke Murphy | WakeUp
A dynamic alarm app that helps to wake the brain by asking the user to solve math problems or review a class lesson. In addition, users are required to actively turn off the alarm to prevent snoozing.
MAKERSPACE
Chinyere Nosike, a 12th-grade student in Troy Lanier’s Projects in Science and Electronics course, has been using The PIRL makerspace for several months to laser cut an architectural model of a house. Last year she was enrolled in Lanier’s Electronics and Robotics class, where she learned about LEDs, series circuits, parallel circuits, circuit breakers and electrical power consumption. Nosike is now using that knowledge to wire her house model with LEDs.
“In short, she is trying to model not only the house itself, but the electrical systems within the house,” Lanier explained. “Once she is done with the prototype, her goal is to design her own home and then outfit it with not only the electrical systems, but also things like miniature ceiling fans, a doorbell and a remote-controlled, motordriven garage door.”
Amazing!
MEASURING SURFACE FRICTION in Physics 1
Students in Danielle Horton’s Physics 1 classes recently conducted an interesting experiment to measure friction on inclined surfaces.
For the experiment, students took friction blocks with different masses, placed them on a track and raised the track until the blocks began to slide. After measuring the angle of the track, they were able to calculate the coefficient of friction. If all went as planned, they should have discovered that no matter how much mass a block had, it still overcame its static friction at the same angle.
“This experiment enabled them to definitively conclude that the only thing that affects the coefficient of friction is the type of surfaces in contact,” Horton explained. •
USING CRISPR FOR GENOME ENGINEERING in Advanced Biology II
Students in Advanced Biology II with Dean Mohlman have been learning to edit genes thanks to a CRISPR experiment.
CRISPR stands for Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats. It is a component of bacterial immune systems that can modify DNA. Mohlman has used the technique to teach students how to target bacteria DNA, cut out a specific gene and then insert another in its place, altering the original DNA.
“I'm very proud of what the students have been able to accomplish,” Mohlman said. “It’s not as exciting as curing cancer, but it offers hope for the future of curing people of inherited diseases.” •
PHOTO LEFT: Physics students Claire Murray, Avery Griffin and Kayla Patel; BELOW: Advanced Biology II students Sam Levy and Oscar Humphrey
We wanted the makerspace to be a place where students could bring ideas and concepts and literally build them into existence.
STUDENTS COLLABORATE WITH BIOENGINEERING FIRM ON CARBON REMOVAL METHOD
“Last spring, I notified the director of the school’s Spartans Engage Program about my interest in finding a summer internship,” said Natalie Kim, a member of the Class of 2022. “I felt like I hit the jackpot when I was interviewed and selected by attorney Beth McDaniel, president of Reactive Surfaces, to lead a student team in the XPRIZE Carbon Removal competition.
“In addition to shadowing McDaniel throughout the summer, witnessing the intersection of STEM and law firsthand, I was interested in the XPRIZE because of the multifaceted societal implications of climate change,” Kim added.
Funded by Elon Musk’s SpaceX, the XPRIZE Carbon Removal competition was created to help accelerate innovation for low-cost, scalable and sustainable carbon-removal solutions. McDaniel already was working on a submission from her company, which bioengineered a carbon-isolating surface coating that mimics the photosynthesis of ocean-bound algae. Within the coating itself, algae photosynthesize and sequester carbon in the form of nanocellulose. She and Kim soon engaged a team of St. Stephen’s students to work on a student submission.
The Spartan team’s carbon-removal idea involved constructing a small greenhouse, the inside of which would resemble the environment on Mars. The greenhouse would contain six garment racks with hangers holding butcher paper coated with Reactive Surface’s carbon-isolating surface coating. Their greenhouse would be equipped to monitor carbon concentration, light intensity, temperature and humidity—conditions conducive to algae health.
“CO2 concentration would begin at 2 to 3 percent,” Kim explained. “However, as the coating photosynthesized, a drop in CO2 concentration and increase in O2 concentration are expected. The efficacy of the experiment was meant to show that the coating could sequester carbon from high-CO2-emitting facilities, produce O2 for extraterrestrial environments, and produce biomass for barren soil, as well as function under extreme terrestrial conditions.
“Such multidimensional problem solving is critical to advancing the fight against climate change, as well as the frontiers of science,” Kim added.
The Spartan team soon went to work, testing a scaled-down version of their Mars experiment to ensure the carbon-capturing coating would retain adhesiveness in an environment with high CO2 concentration levels, a premise of their XPRIZE Carbon Removal proposal. Students hung the coated paper on wooden dowels inside a sealed fish tank, rather than using a greenhouse and hangers. They discovered that, when applied over Massively Iterated Vertical Surfaces (CCC-MIVS), the surface coating could sequester carbon safely.
“Minimizing space between vertically hanging substrates maximizes the surface area on which the coating can photosynthesize,” Kim said. “Implementing CCC-MIVS in a space conducive to photosynthesis is possible in nearly any environment, whether that be on Earth or elsewhere in the cosmos.”
Looking back on their proposal and the experiment they conducted, Kim said she was impressed by the Spartan team’s tenacity. “When we began devising a proposal, we encountered many challenges due to our lack of knowledge about carbon-capturing coatings, scientific proposal writing and formal scientific experimentation,” she acknowledged. “To rectify this, we spent countless hours researching carbon-capturing coatings and reading relevant scientific literature. We also reached out regularly to Reactive Surfaces for feedback.”
Kim said participating in the internship and preparing the student XPRIZE submission taught her that research is less about what you discover and more about the interpersonal and intellectual connections you make along the way. “The bonds I now have with my St. Stephen’s teammates are unique in that we all share common academic interests, regardless of our grade level,” she said.
Natalie Kim
extremely difficult if not impossible. “In addition, I’ve experienced for myself the importance of being able to be a salesperson for science, because without any funds, significant scientific progress in this day and age is
“This particular takeaway reminds me of what I learned in Frank Mikan’s Astrophysics class: George Ellery Hale was an astronomer who managed to secure funds to build the world’s largest telescope four times, each bigger than the last,” she explained. “His natural ability to forge human connections, while also possessing great knowledge in STEM and the humanities, helped him develop rapport with donors.”
Although the Spartan team’s submission was not selected by the XPRIZE judges, Kim is still proud of the work they did—on top of their regular school workloads. “Having looked at the list of winners, all of whom have ties to world-renowned research universities, it is understandable that we did not receive a student award,” she said, humbly.
As expected, many of Kim’s favorite St. Stephen’s courses include Mikan’s Astrophysics class and his Advanced Physics II course. However, she also enjoys studying writing and social science, as well as playing field hockey and participating in the orchestra and chamber group. “I truly am passionate about every extracurricular group in which I am involved—Student Government, the Curriculum Advocacy Alliance, Asian Affinity Group, Korean Affinity Group, Debate Club, Christian Youth Group, Chapel Leadership Team and Proteus magazine,” she said.
“What I enjoy most about St. Stephen’s is the support of students’ ‘dabbling’ in many seemingly disparate areas of study and extracurricular activities,” she said. “I am keenly aware of the fact that, had I gone to pretty much any other school in Austin, I would not be able to explore the range of academic disciplines, extracurricular activities and group dynamics I have. Coaches, teachers and mentors across departments understand and encourage students to try a million different things, holding some grace for each student because there are limits to how well one can do something while exploring a million others.”
When she graduates in May, Kim acknowledged that it will be difficult for her to leave The Hill. “I’ve been a part of the St. Stephen’s community since 6th grade, which means that I had the privilege of establishing my identity over time in an accepting environment,” she said. “I will miss being able to go about my day, knowing that people around me know me intimately, know who I am as an individual and support me. “I spent my early childhood disassociating from Korean culture in order to assimilate into predominantly white spaces,” Kim added. “I’ve since realized that my intersectional perspective is worthy of celebration and understanding.” •
SPARTANS ENGAGE
A Spark 2023 Strategic Plan initiative, Spartans Engage enables students to gain real-world experiences while exploring different career fields alongside St. Stephen’s alumni, parents and parents of alumni.
Math instructor Kurt Oehler ’93 serves as program director and matches interested students with appropriate mentorships and internships. He collaborates regularly with Paul Byars ’07 and Laura Scanlan Cho ’89, who work with alumni and parents to offer a range of engagement opportunities to Upper School students. To learn more about the program or volunteer to work with a student, please send an email to spartansengage@gmail.com.
St. Stephen’s Engineering and Physics Instructor Danielle Horton understands that students learn better by doing, which is why she provides myriad hands-on learning opportunities. Her students build egg rockets that they hope to send skyward over Phipps Field. They build mousetrap cars and miniature catapults to study projectile motion. They design underwater remotely operated vehicles to explore both shipbuilding and ocean engineering. They even use spaghetti and hot glue to build truss bridges.
Why pasta? Because it behaves similarly to steel—bending, twisting and breaking under tension and compression, which shows her students how and where they need to improve their bridge designs for greater load-bearing outcomes.
“Unlike balsa wood bridges, joint types and gluing skills are not a factor in the design,” Horton said of her spaghetti bridge project. “Using pasta allows for rapid prototyping so students can create multiple iterations and improve their designs.”
For the spaghetti bridge project, students are asked to design a truss bridge with the greatest strength-to-weight ratio, which is determined by the amount of weight the bridge can hold divided by the mass of the bridge. The project requirements are straightforward: the bridge must weigh less than 80 g, the lasagna noodle roadway must be at least 5 cm wide, the bridge must be at least 5 cm high in the center and span at least 30 cm, and the design must be open on both ends. Before any building begins, Horton’s students research 15 to 20 different trusses, discuss the advantages and disadvantages of each truss, trace the path of force, and mathematically solve for different loads using varying joint designs. They also are expected to become proficient in computer-aided drawing programs, which they use to design their own bridges.
Armed with solid knowledge of trusses, forces and basic statics (forces balanced in all directions), students spend three or four class periods building their bridges before testing their initial designs and analyzing failure points. “The most challenging part is designing the bases,” Horton noted. “The designs must distribute the load downward and outward to the bases through a singular load path. The bridge will fail if the base is not level and stable.”
Finally, students modify their original plans and rebuild their bridges for improved outcomes. Following another day of testing, they craft a final report and present their projects to Horton and their classmates.
“The beauty of using spaghetti for this project is that it takes very little time to create a 3D bridge that can be tested and redesigned,” Horton said. “This allows students to see the failure points of the first bridge, analyze if it broke under tension or compression, and then develop a solution and build a second iteration that hopefully is more successful.” •
PHOTO Danielle Horton discussing the spaghetti bridge project at a teachers’ conference ENAGING STUDENTS IN ENGINEERING WITH PASTA
FROM EARTH SCIENCE WITH MIKAN TO THE U.S. GEOLOGICAL SURVEY:
Matthew Morriss, Ph.D., ’09 Shares His Story
Iam a physical scientist at the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), based out of the Utah Water Science Center in Salt Lake City. I completed my doctorate in geomorphology at the University of Oregon in 2020. Geomorphology is the study of landscapes and how they form, and geomorphologic inquiry is the means to answering fundamental questions about the Earth.
Most of my graduate work was in the realm of fluvial geomorphology, the physical characteristics of rivers. Specifically, I examined the history of North America’s deepest canyon: Hells Canyon, which is 2,000 feet deeper than the Grand Canyon, located on the border of Oregon and Idaho. Despite its depth, the age and origin of the canyon have been a mystery for some time. My goal was to elucidate when the canyon was carved and provide potential rate of incision estimates and develop a conceptual model for the mechanism of canyon carving. This work involved a fair amount of field research, including caving, looking for river deposits in limestone caverns, empirical measurements from remote sensing, and numerical landscape evolution models.
Since starting at the USGS, I have mostly been involved in a large database effort, the Watershed Boundary Database (WBD), which is a USGS-driven effort to map the drainage divides of every catchment in the country in high resolution. I have also been slowly developing some of my own research projects, including understanding rock glacier mechanics and hydrology.
I've often enjoyed working on and in more obscure topics—a canyon no one has heard of or on rock glaciers that not many people are actively studying. It provides a bit more intellectual freedom as not many people are currently working in that region and you have a chance to hopefully provide some interesting and compelling results. The flipside is that it can be hard to get funding or attract interest from a committee of faculty at a given time, so some creativity is needed too. I find geomorphology and specifically rivers exciting, as they can be true tape recordings of the tectonic and dynamic evolution of a region. You can also actively see how they are evolving based on their long profile, which is readily extractable from our various remotely sensed datasets. I found this type of accessible and intuitive framework very tangible and exciting! As a plus, the literature is constantly evolving in fluvial geomorphology so there are always new things to learn.
I was inspired to study earth science by my teachers. I was very lucky to have some phenomenal teachers at St. Stephen’s. One teacher in particular, Frank Mikan, had spent years as a mining geologist in Montana. His stories of prospecting and mapping ore bodies captured my imagination. I was someone who already loved being outside but had no concept of geology as a career before that moment. The idea of studying how the rocks on the earth formed or building a story of a particular geologic unit or event made so much sense to me and was truly captivating. I declared my major as geology the second month of my freshman year at Whitman College and never looked back. I pursued graduate school hoping to teach at a small liberal arts school and be an inspiration to others to study earth science, but as life takes interesting turns, I am now at the USGS. My doctoral thesis is dedicated to Frank Mikan and all the inspirational teachers in my life. •
—matthew morriss, ph.d., ’09
CREATING GREATER EQUALITY IN THE SCIENCES
MEET SONAL ALLA
Sonal Alla, an 11th grader, joined the St. Stephen’s community three years ago for the school’s many academic and extracurricular opportunities, including an array of challenging STEM classes and the opportunity to connect with students from a variety of backgrounds.
Alla, who is interested in a career in medicine, co-founded the Social Justice in Science Club with 12th grader Alice Huang. They also serve as Texas branch directors for Opportunity X, a national nonprofit that helps expose underrepresented students to science research. Through their partnership, Social Justice in Science Club members and other student volunteers host a biweekly science research club for students at Burnet Middle School. We asked Alla to share her experiences with our readers.
Social Justice in Science Club co-founders Alice Huang and Sonal Alla with club sponsor Danielle Horton
Opportunity X is a nonprofit organization dedicated to bringing science research opportunities to underrepresented and low-resource groups. I wanted to become involved with this program because by working with Opportunity X, I have the chance to combine two of my passions: serving others and STEM.
For our sessions with the Burnet students, Alice and I plan the curriculum, design the experiments and purchase the materials. We also design the presentation slides with the help of other St. Stephen’s students. During the meeting with Burnet students, we demonstrate an experiment and introduce the corresponding scientific concepts/principles. Next, our volunteers provide guidance to the students as they perform the experiment on their own. At the end of the
session, we conclude with a group discussion and analysis of the results.
The best part of this volunteer work for me has been getting to watch the students develop a passion for STEM. There is nothing more rewarding than getting to see that you are making a difference in someone’s life. I also love knowing that I am fostering a future of diversity in STEM.
Raising awareness of minorities in STEM is essential, because including diverse backgrounds will drive more innovation. Additionally, diversity in STEM promotes greater equality among the lines of race, sexual orientation, ethnicity, gender and socioeconomic status.
In addition to the Social Justice in Science Club, I co-run Medical Society, Indian Affinity Club and Interact Club at St. Stephen’s. I am also a dancer in Chrysalis, the Upper School dance company. My favorite classes are definitely biology and chemistry; I have always been drawn to science.
Aside from these school-associated extracurricular activities, I help conduct neuroscience research at The University of Texas at Austin. Under the guidance of Professor Robin Hilsabeck, I have been studying the differences in cognitive impairments across different ethnicities.
I want to be a surgeon and am currently interested in neurosurgery. There is so much we have not discovered and so much potential for medical breakthroughs. My love for neuroscience actually goes back to 7th grade, when I conducted a research project on how having a dominant side of the brain affects someone’s personality. I also love the interpersonal aspect of being a physician; there is nothing more rewarding than getting to know the person you are helping. •
CLINICAL NEUROPSYCHOLOGIST SPEAKS WITH SOCIAL JUSTICE IN SCIENCE CLUB
In early October, the Social Justice in Science Club, in partnership with Medical Society, welcomed their first guest speaker of the academic year: Robin C. Hilsabeck, Ph.D., director of UT Health Austin’s Comprehensive Memory Center.
A highly distinguished clinical neuropsychologist specializing in Alzheimer’s disease, dementia and cognitive impairment, Hilsabeck has been recognized for distinguished service by the National Academy of Neuropsychology and for excellence in research on aging by the Texas Aging and Longevity Center.
She joined the club meeting via videoconference and spoke with more than 40 Upper School students about her research on older adults with cognitive issues. In addition to discussing her clinical practice, she spoke about her experiences as a woman researcher in STEM, the future of neuroscience and disparities in health care.
Hilsabeck advised students interested in entering the medical field to seek the perspectives of different practitioners. “It’s a long, hard road,” she said of medical practice and research. “Talk to people doing the work you’re interested in to get their perspective.”
She also advised students interested in medical research to stay objective, avoid personal biases and always focus on the data. “Working with older adults in a clinical setting can get sad,” she noted. “I feel privileged to hear their stories and focus on helping them in their twilight years.”
When asked about her biggest career challenge, Hilsabeck said that being promoted can be a double-edged sword. “I want to be a scientist and work with clients,” she said. “But when you move into leadership roles, you also take on managing other people and the work they do. That can be difficult, particularly when you cannot control some of the things they’re up against.”
Special thanks go to Social Justice in Science Club leaders Sonal Alla and Alice Huang for arranging Hilsabeck’s talk with students. To learn more about this student organization, as well as the myriad other clubs offered at St. Stephen’s, visit the Campus Life section of our website.•
