VIRGINIA BEACH – Thousands of people will gather at the city’s convention center in June to see robots putting golf balls and products made from 3-D printers.
The brains behind the inventions aren’t startup entrepreneurs; they’re students of Virginia Beach Public Schools. The division is hosting its 8th annual science, technology, engineering and math competition June 3. Students from 65 of the city’s public schools will compete in robotics, cybersecurity and entrepreneurship.
“We don’t know of another city in the country doing a home-grown challenge of this breadth and scope,” said Patrick Konopnicki, the school district’s director of technical and career education.
The free competition is 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. and involves elementary, middle and high school students. The event began as a strictly robotic competition. Organizers added a “maker” element last year and cybersecurity this year.
“We’re trying to help them understand the career field of STEM,” Konopnicki said. “There’s a national clamor for STEM-oriented workers and hundreds of thousands of unfulfilled jobs.”
Linda Lavender, who instructed students on cybersecurity for the competition, said online security is extremely important in the face of increasingly frequent security breaches.
“We are faced with many threats, personally, to our businesses and our critical infrastructure,” she said in an email. “Adding cybersecurity challenges the students to tackle these problems and along with applying their skills, validates the growing need for cybersecurity professionals.”
The competition’s robotic segment includes students operating robots they built and attempting to control the machines to putt a golf ball. Students who participate in the maker challenge will present their 3-D products to judges. And high school students will participate in live sessions of protecting a firewall developed by a Navy cyber commander, Konopnicki said.
Students have met several times a week after school since September to prepare for the event.
“It is the highlight of the year for our team here in this office,” Konopnicki said, “that we’re able to help so many children in so many schools see a career pathway in the future they may not have known existed.”
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