VMASC Announces 2022 STEM Day Engineering Design Challenge Winners

By Jessica Zimmerman

Suffolk, Va. (December 7, 2022) –   The Virginia, Modeling, Analysis, and Simulation Center (VMASC) STEM and Student Engagement department has announced the winners of the 2002 VMASC Regional K-12 Engineering Design Challenge. The Challenge, which took place on November 8^th – STEM Day – asked schools who participated to build a prototype of an arcade or carnival game made with household or recyclable materials. Over 4,000 students across five school divisions in Hampton Roads participated in this year’s Challenge.

“For this year’s VMASC National STEM Day Challenge, we challenged students across Hampton Roads to build an arcade or carnival game, which provide great opportunities to learn and practice STEM concepts of engineering design. Arcade games are perfect to apply the engineering design process, physics, computational thinking, science, and logic while having fun,” said Jessica Johnson, Director for STEM and Student Engagement and Research Assistant Professor for ODU.

Smithfield High School with the Isle of Wight County Public Schools won first place and will receive $1,000. Oakland Elementary School with Suffolk Public Schools won second place and will receive $500, and Southside S.T.E.M. Academy at Campostella with Norfolk Public Schools will receive $250 as the third-place winner.

“We had a very diverse team with unique personalities,” said Heather Greer, engineering teacher at Smithfield High School. “As an educator, it was thrilling to watch the team leverage each other’s strengths and bring a crazy, ambitious idea to life that they had collectively agreed upon. They grew into a cohesive group that was able to effectively plan, troubleshoot and solve problems as they built their pinball machine.” 

The activities and criteria in the Challenge are aligned to incorporate Virginia Department of Education STEM careers and STEM literacy. Each team that participated received a Challenge packet with background information, rules, criteria, and STEM career and literacy connections. This year’s task was to research a design of an arcade game of the team’s choosing and use the engineering design process to prototype and build the game with special features and a token dispenser for winning players.

“Several schools from across Hampton Roads participated in the STEM Day Challenge where students used digital fabrication equipment, software and technologies to develop their project prototypes, which is very similar to technology and methodologies utilized here at VMASC in multidisciplinary research,” said Johnson. “Great job to everyone!”