All of our teams are delights to work with, but with Hagerty High School, they’re a team we can count to promote H2AC at fairs throughout the Florida area. Hagerty loves to share STEAM with the community around them, and you may recall their news-piece about all their STEAM program has to offer.
Let’s here from STEM Coach Lindsey Spaulding, as she talks about H2AC’s impact on her team.
Why do you as a teacher want to volunteer your time to coach your team?
I volunteer to coach the students for H2AC because of their motivation to participate in a STEAM learning opportunity. It gives the students multiple opportunities to practice all their STEAM skills, relate their topic (Energy!) to the real world while problem solving and communicating collaboratively. Plus the cars are really fun to race!
List any Curricular or Extra Curricular Clubs that you lead or have lead in the past:
I sponsor “The Mod Squad” a community outreach club that loves to take their knowledge and share it with others! We work with the community at all age levels, from preschoolers to the elderly.
List any past hydrogen, renewable energy,engineering activities or competitions that you have facilitated:
I have facilitating many energy projects in partnership with the Florida Solar Energy Center. Everything from hydrogen fuel challenges to energy innovations, solar cooking, and the H2AC race. I also have facilitating many science fair projects designing energy efficient systems and modeling them.
How will participating in this competition benefit your students’ familiarity with renewable energy & their opinions on further education and careers opportunities in STEM related fields?
Hopefully this project will fuel the students for the future. There are large numbers of modeling and simulation careers in the field of energy and I am hoping to guide the students in the direction to take action towards improving our futures energy dependence and use.
How did H2AC increase you and your team’s familiarity with renewable energy?
It helped us understand the process required to incorporate hydrogen as fuel source. It gave us a lot to brainstorm in reference to how to use hydrogen effectively in communities and ways we can improve the storage and transfer of hydrogen fuels in order to use it as a fuel for consumers.