SeaPerch Program Provides Engineering Opportunities At Young Age

At Severna Park Elementary, fifth-graders have the opportunity to build underwater robots with the SeaPerch program.

SeaPerch is a K-12 outreach program through the Department of the Navy with different activities and curriculums for different age groups. At Severna Park Elementary, the SeaPerch program is composed of 18 students who partner to build nine robots.

“I like it because it’s very hands-on. The kids take a box of materials and they saw, they drill, they solder,” said Jackie Barnes, a Severna Park Elementary teacher. “In the end, they get this robot that actually runs underwater.”

Barnes and fellow teacher Jennie Merrill run the school’s SeaPerch program. Merrill said SeaPerch is a fun STEM program that the kids are “highly interested” in.

“It’s opening up their whole lives to engineering and being able to actually learn skills they can use, and they can get interested in building something cool,” Merrill said.

Dr. Angela Moran, a mechanical engineer at the Department of the Navy and director of the STEM outreach efforts, said anything that gets kids excited about hands-on learning is a good program.

“It teaches kids a lot about general areas of engineering and underwater engineering applications,” Moran said. “It’s a great program to get kids emerged in hands-on activities and also include peripheral activities that teach about science and engineering concepts.”

The program runs from January through May, and students meet from 7:30am-8:50am on Thursdays. Though there isn’t a cost to be in the program, students have to apply as each school is limited to 20 participants. Kids fill out applications in December, explaining why they are interested in the program, what applicable skills they have and what they are hoping to learn.

In the program, each pair of students gets a box that has the robots’ parts and many different manuals. Then, over the course of 10 weeks, students use the manuals and video clips to assemble their robots. In addition to Barnes and Merrill, each group requires a parent to help build the robot.

“They do it piece by piece; it’s all broken down into doable parts,” Barnes said. “Each part has a manual that has pictures and everything that helps the kids and the parents to put the perch together.”

To help students make the real-world connection of what they’re doing, Severna Park Elementary partnered with Northrop Grumman. For the last two years, a representative from Northrop Grumman has visited Severna Park Elementary one Thursday morning to do different experiments with the students.

During last year’s visit, the representative showed students that the circuit boards and motors they built were used for different things at Northrop Grumman.

“[The representative] gave all these connections to the kids and this whole other outlook as to what SeaPerch is,” Merrill said. “Even though we’re the basic foundation, they now can take it and go to another level.”

Though many factors go into students choosing a STEM career path, Moran said she hopes this will be the “ah-ha” moment for some of them.

“This is certainly an opportunity that will get kids excited and is memorable,” Moran said.

The fifth-graders also have two opportunities to test out their SeaPerch robots in the water. The first is during a class trip to the Y in Arnold, where students test their robots in the therapy pool.

With the second opportunity, the students also get to interact with other SeaPerch students in the county. The event takes place at the National Electronics Museum in Linthicum in May. For the fifth-graders, the event is an exposition where they tour the museum, complete a scavenger hunt and test their SeaPerch robots in various pools.

For the other age groups, this is a competition. The older SeaPerch groups compete in local, regional and national competitions, Merrill said.

For more information on SeaPerch, visit www.seaperch.org.