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Young minds engineer high-tech inventions

Four Stafford schools prepare top technical students for national competition

BY HUGH MUIR

Date published: 6/2/2009

BY HUGH MUIR

"Let me give you some scary statistics," said Warren Hamblet, head of technical education at H.H. Poole Middle School in southern Stafford. "There are 43,000 students studying technology at the college level in the United States. In similar schools in India, there are 655,000. In China, the number is 950,000."

Hamblet sponsors and coaches the Poole chapter of the Technology Student Association, a nationwide organization that encourages middle and high school students to study and compete in a wide range of technological subjects. Of the 13 middle and high schools in Stafford, four have TSA organizations.

Poole and Gayle middle schools and Colonial Forge and Mountain View high schools expect to send about 60 students to this year's national competition in Denver. The 12,000 competitors there will come from a nationwide TSA membership of 150,000 in 2,000 schools spanning 47 states. Sixty schools in Virginia are expected to compete.

"Nobody gets paid to do this," said Terry Godwin, TSA advisor at Mountain View. "TSA has few industrial sponsors, so the kids and their families have to raise most of the money to pay for the program."

COLONIAL FORGE HIGH

Colonial Forge High School has the largest TSA chapter in Virginia, with 148 members. It sent 134 students to the northern regional competition in March, and 106 to the state competition in early May, where its members competed in 36 of the 39 events offered. It came away with 10 first-place awards, five seconds and seven thirds, plus the Outstanding School Award.

Colonial Forge will send 47 students to Denver to compete in events such as Animatronics, Architecture Model, Desktop Publishing, Fashion Design (its four-member team won first place in the state with a coral prom gown), Music Production and Future Technology Teacher.

"All of these events have something to do with the technology-education curriculum," said Dori Roberts, TSA adviser at Colonial Forge and Virginia's TSA Adviser of the Year in 2008. "This takes what students learn in class to a far, far higher level. They are no longer working for an A, but for the satisfaction of the technical challenge itself."

The Technology Student Association was founded in 1978 and is recognized by the Department of Education as the official industrial-arts organization for students aspiring to be scientists, engineers and technologists. The annual competitions are at the regional (there are six regions in Virginia), state and national levels. The motto of the 31-year-old organization is "Learning to live in a technical world." "All that is needed for a TSA chapter at a school is a motivated teacher and an eager group of students," said a spokesman. "An expensive array of high-tech equipment is not necessary." TSA has 150,000 student members and 2,500 teachers and advisors nationwide. The membership is 45 percent women and 35 percent minority. Three-quarters of the members go on to college. The program is based on the nationally known STEM program, which focuses on Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics. To learn more, go to TSAweb .org/OurStory or call 703/860-9000. The TSA's headquarters is in Reston.

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Date published: 6/2/2009