In these pictures, students in the after school STEM class discuss and begin work on a container that will hopefully allow their single potato chip to be mailed and arrive in one piece. (Ric Hanson/photos) [Click on each image to enlarge]

MS Science Teacher Kara Martin (right) explains the rules to students before they begin working on their shipping containers.

Advanced students with the Atlantic Middle School are involved in an after school STEM Excellence and Leadership Program. Stem stands for Science Technology Engineering and Math. The program, which is fairly new to Iowa, offers science tutoring to support 6^th through 8^th grade, gifted science and math students, in some of the state’s smallest communities. The program is funded through a two-million dollar National Science Foundation grant, and is administered by the University of Iowa College of Education’s Belin-Blank Center for Gifted Education and Talent Development. About a dozen or so students are involved in the Atlantic Middle School Program. School Principal Josh Rasmussen said the after school program expands on an industrial technology program the school had going prior to the grant.

He says the program offers valuable lessons in critical thinking.

Kara Martin is the Middle School Science Teacher who has assigned the STEM students a project that challenges their organizational, cooperative and creative capabilities.

Students have an hour to design and test a package to safely ship a single potato chip through the USPS to another school. Upon receipt, the chip will be evaluated and scored. The goal is to engineer a package to have the smallest mass and volume, while at the same time protecting the chip. The package can be no larger than 3×5″, and there must be no writing on the package, such as fragile, or handle with care. A perfect chips scores 100 points, slightly damaged 50 pts, split chip 10 pts, major damage 5 points, dust 1 pt. Overall scores = Intactness score/(mass in kg x volume in cc).,

Andrea Reilly is the Middle School Talented and Gifted Program Coordinator. She says the grant provided by the UI Belkin Center allowed some of the eighth-grade students the opportunity to take field trips to witness real world applications of STEM. 

One of the students tasked with shipping the single potato chip in hopes it will come back in one piece, is 6^th grader Mary McCurdy, the daughter of John and Ann McCurdy, of Atlantic, who says she is really enjoying the experience.

Mary talked about what she hopes to learn from the experiment, outside the engineering principals.

Mary McCurdy talks w/reporters about the STEM experiment & experience. MS Science Teacher Kara Martin is in the background.

In addition to Atlantic, the STEM Excellence and Leadership Program, involves students with the: Adel DeSoto Minburn Middle School; Cardinal Middle School; Davis County Middle School; Eddyville-Blakesburg-Fremont Junior/Senior High School; Ford Dodge Middle School; Graettinger-Terril Middle School; Mount Pleasant Community Middle School; Spencer Middle School, and the Starmont Middle School.