Water is propelling technology education students at two eastern Oklahoma schools toward a chance at improving their communities and gaining extra resources for their classrooms.
Memorial Middle School of Tulsa and Butner High School are among five state finalists in Samsung’s Solve for Tomorrow competition.
Launched in 2010, the competition challenges public school students in grades 6-12 to explore the role science, technology, engineering and math can play in addressing some of the biggest issues in their local communities. The competition is designed to engage students in active, hands-on learning that can be applied to real-world problems.
A winner from each state will be announced in mid-February, with each one receiving $20,000 in supplies and technology tools. Ten national finalists will be selected later this year, with each one receiving $50,000 in additional prizes.
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Three overall winners will each receive $100,000 in classroom resources.
Oklahoma’s other state finalists include Durant High School, Caddo County’s Gracemont High School and Curtis Inge Middle School in Noble.
Citing a desire to prevent waterborne diseases such as cholera, ebola and schistosomiasis, a group of Abraham Kamara’s Memorial Middle School students are working to design, develop and build a solar-powered community water system.
Along with safe, clean drinking water, the system as designed would direct any excess liquid to hydroponic and aquaponic tanks.
“Water is a basic human need,” Kamara said. “When you look at what’s happened in the last 10 years or so, even here in the United States, we have communities … that are experiencing water crises. When you move to other parts of the world, particularly Sub-Saharan Africa, the problem becomes more and more acute.”
After studying water conservation efforts, the students have been designing and making system prototypes on a 3-D printer. The project was already in motion before the decision to enter the contest, and one of Kamara’s former students, now a freshman at Memorial High School, is continuing to help with the design portion.
The students will test their prototypes by testing water quality from sites around the Tulsa area, including other campuses within Tulsa Public Schools.
Long term, the group’s goal is to eventually link up with students in other countries to share their design plans.
“If we do figure a way to solve this, it would be nice to help the people who need help and need clean water,” seventh-grade student Yeson Zuniga said.
Meanwhile, about 60 miles to the southwest, 22 students at Butner High School in Cromwell are working with technology education teacher Christy Findley to develop a hydroelectric system.
Butner High School has about 60 total students enrolled from an attendance area that stretches across portions of northern Seminole County, southern Okfuskee County and western Hughes County along the Interstate 40 corridor.
This is the second consecutive year that the school has been named a state finalist. Findley and BHS Principal Mark Dean said participating in contests like the Solve for Tomorrow challenge have made it possible not only to provide an opportunity to pique students’ interest in engineering and technology but also for their rural school district to be able to get the equipment needed to develop a program to support that budding interest.
“We’ve gradually been able to build using those tools,” Findley said. “We’ve been able to get computers and 3-D printers to help us get the tech ed program off of the ground here.”
“Not every kid is an athlete and for a long time, all we’ve had out here is athletics,” Dean said. “This is another way to get our non-athlete kids involved, because we want them involved and motivated to do something.”
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Investigative reporting and local schools coverage by Andrea Eger and Lenzy Krehbiel-Burton.
