Photo By Margaret Kenyon | A SeaGlide underwater autonomous vehicle floats in a pool of water before a SeaGlide...... read more read more
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In February 2021, the Naval Surface Warfare, Philadelphia Division (NSWCPD) SeaGlide Team, comprised of Kyle Verrinder, Adam Wechsler, Jeffrey Merlino, and Dr. Gregory Anderson, was named as the Department of Defense STEM Advocate of the Quarter in fiscal year 2020.
The award recognizes individuals from both the DoD civilian and active duty military/Guard/Reserve that demonstrate exemplary support of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) education and outreach across the DoD. This is the most prestigious STEM award presented at the DoD-level that enables DON to recognize STEM professionals’ exceptional efforts.
SeaGlide is a program that introduces the concept of autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) to high school students. This program is intended to provide high school teams with an opportunity to expand upon their STEM education.
The NSWCPD SeaGlide team ideated and executed all facets of their competition, including marketing strategy. Their efforts resulted in the participation of approximately 150 middle and high school students and 200 educators in 13 schools and community organizations from five states. In April 2021, NSWCPD virtually hosted the 2021 SeaGlide and SeaPerch Challenge.
According to the award citation, “Others now have a model ready for educators and students to deploy locally, regionally, and nationally for SeaGlide. The Team has certainly gone above and beyond your individual jobs at the Naval Surface Warfare Center, Philadelphia Division to promote STEM engagement for your community.”
“Winning this award is an honor,” said Verrinder, SeaGlide co-lead and NSWCPD mechanical engineer. “I do not participate in SeaGlide or any STEM outreach program for that matter to seek acknowledgement, however, it is humbling and gratifying to have the hard work we put into the SeaGlide program be recognized.”
He added, “The team’s goal with the SeaGlide program is to introduce students to autonomous underwater vehicles in a relatively simple platform that has the potential for expandability. In addition to physical construction of the SeaGlide vehicle and competing against fellow students, the SeaGlide team at NSWCPD aims to further enhance the student’s exposure to constructing and testing electrical circuits and to programming.”
Wechsler, a NSWCPD data scientist, has been involved with SeaGlide shortly after joining NAVSEA in July 2017.
“In 2018 we held the first official SeaGlide competition, after a pilot competition was held in 2017. NSWCPD employees develop the competition rules and rubrics, build the course, and train teachers and students in circuitry and Arduino coding,” he said. “Our partner, Temple University, provides us with resources such as rooms for training, meetings, and competition presentations, a pool for competitions, and volunteers.”
“There are so many great and motivated advocates for STEM careers in NSWCPD’s STEM Outreach Program,” added Tristan Wolfe, NSWCPD STEM Outreach Program Manager. “Winning this award is great for the program. There are so many mentors across our workforce who really care about outreach and make impacts in the lives of students all the time. I’m happy to be involved in the process to get those mentors the recognition they deserve for their efforts.”
SeaGlide remains an important program because it builds upon students’ existing STEM experience and takes it to the next level of learning and critical thinking.
According to Wechsler, “For many students it introduces them to circuitry and coding for the first time. For those students who are familiar with circuitry from SeaPerch, it’s a tremendous increase in complexity. We want to involve students in the engineering process, including research, design, and testing. Although the SeaGlide arrives as a kit, it is a very open-ended build, and students are encouraged to expand its capabilities beyond the basics. We want students to think outside the box, literally! The competition rewards students for the research and design of improvements even if they’re not implemented.”
Always seeking to find new ways to keep students engaged, the program continues to evolve and has added new challenges over the years.
“We started with three sections to the competition, White Paper, Presentation, and Vehicle Performance. Last year we added a fourth, Coding & Circuitry. This year we’ve added two more: Find-the-Fix and Bug Hunt,” said Wechsler. “I’m probably going to be more focused on tightening the screws on the competition, but that will involve improving our training, creating build videos, and clarifying rubrics. I think this will allow students to more comfortably take their SeaGlides beyond the kit. We really would like to increase the number of schools involved and eventually make the competition nationwide, like SeaPerch.”
Unsurprisingly, the reaction to SeaGlide programs has been overwhelmingly positive.
“I get the opportunity to check in with teachers one-on-one during our training sessions and literally every educator I’ve spoken with has been excited to be involved in those programs,” said Wolfe. “Additionally, I had the experience to welcome a graduate researcher studying equity of out of school STEM programs last year to help judge our event who characterized our program as ‘a highly effective competitive STEM program’ and added that ‘NAVSEA people just had such a great demeanor about it all. Everyone was super positive.’ That really gets to the heart of those programs and our impact.”
Visitors from as far away as Florida have attended the competitions, and have learned about taking it back to their part of the country.
NSWCPD employs approximately 2,700 civilian engineers, scientists, technicians, and support personnel. The NSWCPD team does the research and development, test and evaluation, acquisition support, and in-service and logistics engineering for the non-nuclear machinery, ship machinery systems, and related equipment and material for Navy surface ships and submarines. NSWCPD is also the lead organization providing cybersecurity for all ship systems.
| Date Taken: | 05.21.2021 |
| Date Posted: | 05.21.2021 09:47 |
| Story ID: | 397026 |
| Location: | US |
| Web Views: | 239 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
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