Photos by Ralph Freso / Slideshow
Here’s what we need you to do.
In the spirit of reusable rockets, which is the in thing in aerospace engineering, we need you to design a rocket catcher on the spot – oh, and a rocket, too.
That rocket will be dropped from a certain height, though we won’t tell you exactly how high until later.
The rocket catcher will need to catch that rocket so it lands vertically.
And here’s the pickle. You’ll have only these tools: One paper towel tube (the first one is free – additional tubes cost points), along with paper, tape, paperclips and a Manila folder or cardboard.
And you’ll have a mere two hours to design and build it all. The timer is starting … NOW!!!
Scottsdale Christian Academy didn’t waste any time.
Forty minutes into the challenge – just one of five challenges in Friday’s International Christian STEM Competition at Grand Canyon University – the team of middle and high schoolers already had sketched a sophisticated design and started building their rocket catcher – an oil-rig-looking structure whose supports they made by rolling pieces of paper into tubes.
The plan: Put a paper roof on the structure with a hole in the middle to help ease the rocket into a vertical stance.
“If the rocket comes in line like this,” Scottsdale Christian Academy freshman Isaac Hammon said, his arm askew, “it’ll self-correct.”
So why this design?
Hammon, who wants to be an aerospace engineer and LOVES building things, didn’t really know; he just felt it in his bones. But he also felt the team needed more tape.
Teammate Joshua Lanphar, a seventh grader, came back from asking event facilitators, no good news in tow.
“The tape we have is the tape we’ve got,” said Lanphar, who said he’ll probably take over his family’s air conditioning business when he grows up, “But, obviously, engineering would help with that.”
A few tables down, the Mission Viejo Christian School team from Orange County, California, doled out a totally different design.
“We thought a conelike structure would work,” said well-spoken and confident eighth grader Grace Zekaria.
It’s wider at the top, she said. Just seems logical.
She loved the challenge – called the on-site design competition because you don’t find out what the challenge is until you’re at the competition. It’s great experience, she said.
“It helps you to work under pressure, and we all gained a lot, learning to work as a team.”
About 200 students from 22 Christian schools came to compete in the International Christian STEM Competition, including a team from the Dominican Republic that competed virtually.
This weekend marked the fourth year GCU has partnered with the Association of Christian Schools International to bring the competition to fruition.
Participation has tripled in size since it first arrived at the university in 2022.
Students not only competed in the on-site design competition but a robot search-and-rescue, in which teams build robots to help rescuers in clearing debris, secure safe passageways and save lives; the aerospace engineering event, which involved designing, building and releasing a freefall aircraft using a remote trigger from 6 feet high; and the Innovation in Service social engineering challenge that involved teams creating a cybersecurity campaign to help their schools manage their digital footprint and protect it from online threats.
There was also the artificial intelligence chatbot competition. Students designed, planned, built and tested a chatbot for teens using AI based on Scripture and digital well-being tools.
And new this year – an entrepreneurial competition called Venture, with teams pitching their ideas Friday night during the intermission of GCU’s “Shark Tank”-inspired Canyon Challenge.
Dr. Corinne Araza, senior project director of GCU’s K12 Services and Solutions, said university President Brian Mueller wants GCU to become the premier university in Christian STEM education.
The International Christian STEM Competition is part of that vision.
“It showcases the high level of science, technology, engineering and math in Christian schools,” she said. “GCU is helping to support and uplift Christian schools at the K12 level.”
One of those campuses, the Christian Schools at Castle Hills near San Antonio, touts a small but passionate STEM program, said computer science and STEM teacher Sharon McGilvra.
“With this competition, they see what’s out there; they see the problem-solving,” said McGilvra, whose son majors in mechanical engineering at GCU. She added that it’s fulfilling for the students to see the culmination of their projects. All the hard work as led to this.
“They were intimidated at first,” she said, but then after seeing the other projects, knew their strengths and gained confidence.
Esther Abarbanell, a junior at the Christian Schools at Castle Hills in Texas, has competed in robotics for four years. She spoke about the innovations her team made to their year-old robot to improve it, from the cameras, to the newly printed arm claw (the previous claw was too heavy).
The robotics teams competed in a three-arena robotics competition created by Quest 4 Excellence. One area set the scene with dramatic black-and-white photographic panels with images of destroyed buildings and a sign that said “Radiation Hazard.”
Robots, whose actions were coded by students, dug through sand to pick up orange bars they then dropped into a container.
But Abarbanell’s team knew the secret sauce: that it wasn’t just maneuvering their robot through the course that mattered, but turning in an impressive engineering design notebook.
“It’s 90 pages of everything we did,” said Abarbanell, who said what she loves most about competing is, “I like working with my team, they’re great.”
Tyler Heckel, a GCU English for secondary education major, volunteered at the competition as part of the K12 Educational Development team, the GCU department that organizes the event.
“It (STEM) is definitely not my expertise,” said Heckel, K12 Educational Development’s STEM student worker. “But it’s been cool to learn interdisciplinary education. It’s similar principles – being able to tech STEM and teach English – so it’s helped me grow as an educator; now I’m more equipped.”
What he loved about the event is seeing teams from places like Georgia, Virginia and Ohio converge on GCU. “To see all these Christians come from all parts of the country, that’s super awesome,” he said.
Ysabelle Trinidad, a sophomore computer science major and tech lead of Coding With My Girls, volunteered to judge the aerospace engineering challenge.
She loved seeing Christianity play such a big role in the event.
“One of these teams, they were doing a small little prayer … that they bring in their own worldview and apply it to STEM is amazing. I love it.”
Heckel said the same.
While judging the aerospace competition, the team was asked, “What inspired your aircraft?”
“The first thing they did was grab this Bible verse,” he said. “And that’s super cool to me as a Christian. It’s not just something where they throw in a tagline. … It’s actually at the center of their engineering challenge, and that was cool to see.”
GCU Manager of Internal Communications Lana Sweeten-Shults can be reached at lana.sweetenshults@gcu.edu or at 602-639-7901.
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