By Madison Fisler Lewis
Feb. 26, 2015. On Friday, Feb. 27, 600 students from across western North Carolina will converge on Appalachian State University for the Western Regional North Carolina Technology Student Association (NCTSA) conference. Among the students will be participants from Watauga High School and West Wilkes Middle School.
“The conference focuses on STEM related events and allows students to experience engineering first hand,” read a press release.
Activities and competitions will include robotics, structural engineering, flight and dragster design. All of the events will take place in Katherine Harper Hall, Varsity Gym and I.G. Greer Auditorium at ASU.
“We hae 595 students and about 70 judges participating this year,” said Jerianne Taylor, program coordinator.
“The students that come to these competitions have been working on these projects inside and outside of the classroom for a while now. What we do is we have folks from the university judge their projects during the conference and we have an wards ceremony at the end. Then, the selected students will go on to the state competition on March 22-24.”
NCTSA is an organization that works to prepare students to enter STEM related careers.
“Many of our students become engineers, are working with computers, go into various design fields, we really have an outstanding group of graduates,” said Taylor.
“We have about 40 percent female and minority representation, and 75 percent of our students are college-bound. In addition to STEM education, we also focus on leadership skills related to STEM, so our students are getting a huge variety of skills.”
The schedule of events for high school and middle school programs is as follows:
High School Competitions
- 9:00 a.m. – Project setup
- 9:30 a.m. – Career prep, prepared presentation, Sci Vis, Tech Bowl written test and VEX Robotics
- 10 a.m. – Dragster judging, flight endurance, technical sketching
- 10:30 a.m. – Structural engineering
- 11 a.m. – CAD 2D and CAD 3D
- 11:30 a.m. – Dragster testing
- 12 p.m. – Problem solving, Tech Bowl
- 3 p.m. – Awards ceremony
Middle School
- 9:00 a.m. – Project setup
- 9:30 a.m. – Tech Bown written test, VEX Robotics
- 10:00 a.m. – Flight, dragster judging
- 10:30 a.m. – Structural model
- 11 a.m. – Tech Bowl
- 11:30 a.m. – Career prep, dragster testing
- 12:00 p.m. – Problem solving
- 1 p.m. – Prepared speech
- 3:00 – Awards ceremony
For more information about this event, call 828-262-3110.
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