Raton STEM Team Brings Home State Title

By Marty Mayfield

KRTN Multi-Media

 

The Raton High School STEM team made up of seven students made their way to Santa Fe to present a white paper, a prototype and a pitch deck for a project on greenhouse innovations in schools.

The program the students developed uses the greenhouse at the Raton High School and the garden at the Raton Intermediate School to grow vegetables with a goal to provide food to the school cafeteria to help feed local students. Future plans include using solar or wind power to help create a self-sufficient operation and reduce the need for local electricity thus reducing the recurring cost to the operation.

RIST (Raton Innovative STEAM Team) will spend a full semester on outreach to NMPED, NMSU/SFCC, NM Legislators and the Raton Board of Education with the sponsorship endorsement and support of Urenco to make their project proposal of a career pathway piloted at RHS and possibly 1-2 other schools a reality. Industry sponsors that chose a team put up $5000 apiece to view the showcase so each member of the sponsor awarded teams would get $500 per team member and letter through NMAA.

Jo Alhm and Liz Wick were the RHS teacher sponsors for the team and Alhm wrote “We had several different audiences during the competition. Our corporate sponsor is Lisa Hardison, Manager of Communications & Public Relations for Urenco, UUSA The National Enrichment Facility. UUSA was the sponsor that chose the Raton team, and they are “UUSA is the only uranium enrichment facility in North America. UUSA’s production represents approximately one third of the country’s annual demand and is the only operating commercial enrichment facility in the US. It is a key strategic national asset to the USA, operated by a dedicated US workforce and under US nuclear regulation.”

We were granted a full presentation to Dep. Secretary Warniment of PED who is in concert with Math and Science Specialist Chaudhary to send our proposal to College and Career Readiness Bureau for review.”

Alhm went on to write, “Past Santa Fe mayor, and now consultant for Descartes Labs, Javier Gonzales judged the team and suggested we take our pitch to the legislature.  Deloitte gave us kudos at the award ceremony stating their limiting factor was the rule that each industry rep could choose only one team. Lt. Gov Morales was the state dignitary and he invited us to seek an audience through our district legislators at the 2020 sessions.”  Ahlm noted “The Govenor STEM Challenge originally had 62 entries composed of charter, private, parochial, AA-AAAAA public schools. 47 schools made their proposal deadlines but only 19 schools gained an industry sponsor which gained that school NMAA State Championship status. We were quite pleased with the industries that chose to judge our proposal and are proud that Urenco a global industry chose us for sponsorship.

 

Below is the Executive Summary explaining the purpose of the team’s efforts.

The purpose of the team’s participation in this competition is to answer a specific topic regarding the national question presented by the “2019-2020 New Mexico Governor’s STEM Challenge”. The question presented was “How would you use science and technology to keep the world safe?” Raton Innovative STEAM Team (R.I.S.T.) answer to this question was to create a career pathway in Biosphere Engineering for 1^st through 12^th grade students. The purpose of this career pathway is to teach the importance of sustainable food production and water conservation. With national attention being focused on food and water insecurities, it is crucial that we educate ourselves on alternative strategies that will alleviate the food and water crisis. R.I.S.T. addressed the issues by using the school’s greenhouse and teaching students in the Raton District how to grow their own food. R.I.S.T. took into account the constraints of the project and developed a model based off of those guidelines; the A.C.T.S. prototype was created not as a single solution to a problem, but rather a systemic part of our plan to create a career pathway based off of the current Health Care Career Pathway at Raton High School.

 

Below is the conclusion the students presented in their paper.

With R.I.S.T.’s focus decided, the plan established, and A.C.T.S engineered, a systemic plan was developed. The team created a solution to a National Security Problem; the solution is ongoing and will not end with the New Mexico Governor’s STEM Challenge. Plans to further the reach of the greenhouse and establish a Credegree program in Bioscience Engineering does not finish with teaching students. The Credegree program established in the school would give students not only the opportunity to learn but also the means to learn about food and water conservation and all the parts contained in the two crucial topics. The greenhouse and the plan for a Credegree[1] program (Busteed, 2019) would be available to any interested student, offering them a way to reduce costs on college courses and provide them with four years of experience in Biosphere Engineering. This program would be actualized by Santa Fe Community College, who would be offering the coursework. New Mexico State University would further the students’ education in Biosphere Engineering. R.I.S.T. also intends to run the greenhouse using solar or wind power to increase the efficiency and decrease the expenditure of local electricity. Using the greenhouse, the team would then work toward supplementing food sources for the cafeteria through a partnership with A’viands food services. R.I.S.T. will also collaborate with the Master Gardeners through the Colfax County Extension Office to supply starters to the community garden and the Raton Intermediate School Tiger Garden. The team’s plan would give students ongoing education about food and water scarcity. Students would transfer their knowledge on food and water scarcity to offer more innovative and lifesaving ideas that would provide a safer world for the next generation.

Below are links to the STEM Teams White Paper and the PDF of their proposal and work

RIST-STEAM-Project

ScientificWhitePaper-RatonHighSchool-R.I.S.T.projectproposal