More than 100 students from five West Virginia high schools traveled to West Virginia University’s Statler College of Engineering and Mineral Resources Feb. 23 for the Technology Student Association’s TEAMS (Tests of Engineering Aptitude, Mathematics, and Science) Competition.
University High School won the event, which tests students’ problem-solving skills in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. State and national winners will be announced in May. Students on UHS’ winning team are: Conner Castle, Ty Nagy, Jon Lane and Katherine Warner.
WVU has been hosting TEAMS for more than a decade. Students work collaboratively within their teams to solve real-world engineering issues.
Joining University High at the event were teams from Bridgeport High School and Lincoln High School, The Linsly School, and Parkersburg High School.
“Over the past couple of years, we’ve increased the number of schools that compete in the event,” said Cate Schlobohm, interim outreach coordinator for the Statler College. “It’s really motivating to see more students get involved and excited about the competition.”
The theme for this year’s competition was cybersecurity and featured two parts. The first part—a multiple choice test—was followed by an essay portion, which is sent to TSA for judging.
Following the competition, students, coaches and mentors from all five high schools listened to a presentation from West Virginia State Police Sgt. Jim Kozik on how to keep social networking sites secure. The students were given tours of the Statler College by current engineering students, and gained some hands-on experience with biometric activities such as iris scanning, finger print analysis and computer programming.
The Student Society for the Advancement of Biometrics planned and conducted the hands-on activities.
“It’s really important for us to expose students to biometric activities because it’s such a new field and not many of the participants know much about it,” said Ali Kowalski, vice president of SSAB. “They seemed to really enjoy the activities, so we hope to see some more biometrics majors emerge in the near future.”
