In addition to the ROAD mentees we brought along boys and girls from various Rockland County middle and high schools. The teens were divided into 2 groups and spent time with minority engineers from IBM (who volunteered their time to be at the plant). The objective was to encourage our minority youth to seek careers in the STEM field. The IBM team discussed their educational backgrounds and current positions at IBM and explained to the teens how they can work for IBM straight out of high school through a participating P-TECH school. This program allows high school students to receive both a high school diploma and an associates degree in STEM upon graduation from the program.
The youth also worked on
a group scientific project that included the famous "egg drop" test where the kids had to package an egg with various material that carried a cost value. The objective was to package the egg - with the least expense in materials - that when dropped the egg should be intact without breakage. A lot was learned from this test and those teams that had breakage was allowed to come up with another solution. At the conclusion of the event the
mentees were treated to a great lunch by IBM. Special thanks to Annette McBride, Patricia Cabbell and Sandy McGloster who accompanied us as chaperones on the trip. Our hope is that this is just the beginning of hopefully many years of events with IBM.
