Evansville Day School student Benjamin Howard recently attended Robotics Academy at the U.S. Space and Rocket Center, NASA Marshall Space Flight Center’s Official Visitor Center. The weeklong educational program promotes science, technology, engineering and math (STEM), while training students and adults with hands-on activities and missions based on teamwork, leadership and decision-making.

Howard, a seventh grader, was part of the Robotics Academy program, which is specifically designed for trainees who have a particular interest in engineering. The mission of Space Camp Robotics is to show trainees how engineers develop solutions for real-world problems using real-world technologies. At all age levels, trainees use state-of-the-art robotics systems to compete in air, sea, and land activities and missions. Using the Office of Naval Research’s SeaPerch undersea robotics, Benjamin and the other trainees test payloads on an unmanned aerial vehicle, all while strengthening teamwork and leadership skills. At the end of their missions, the teams arrived in time to graduate with honors.

More than 750,000 trainees have graduated from Space Camp since its inception in Huntsville, Alabama in 1982, including STS-131 astronaut Dottie Metcalf-Lindenburger, European Space Agency astronaut, Samantha Cristoforetti, and Kate Rubins, who launched to the ISS this summer. Last year, children and teachers from all 50 states and 69 international locations attended Space Camp.

Benjamin is new to Evansville Day School this year and we are thrilled that he’s already engaging in opportunities aligned with the Day School mission to create lifelong learners.  His experiences will be an asset to our middle school robotics program, and we are excited to watch him grow. As the area’s only independent school, Evansville Day School is committed to providing a future proof education to balanced, resilient, globally minded, entrepreneurial learners like Ben.