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 GREEN BAY, Wisconsin USA — The Five Clans Rocket Team at the College of Menominee Nation in Green Bay has shown that they can successfully design and build working rockets.
They’ve competed against colleges and universities at the Wisconsin Space Grant Consortium’s Student Rocket Design Competition, winning the Director’s Award there. This year, they’ll be contestants, not only at that competition, but also at the national level during NASA’s University Student Launch Initiative rocket competition this spring. But building rockets isn’t all the team does. Through their rocket building projects, the students on the Five Clans Rocket Team are reaching out to the community, encouraging the next generation to embrace the challenges of science and engineering. The team runs "Family Math and Science Nights" at middle schools in their area using rockets as their teaching tools. They’re also assisting two teams from the Oneida Nation High School who are involved in Spaceport Sheboygan’s Rockets for Schools competition. In 2007, the team was present at the College of Menominee Nation’s booth at a career expo, showcasing their rockets and the rocket program for interested students. The team hopes that through activities such as these, young students will be inspired to give the sciences a try; and why wouldn't they, once the young students see how the college’s rocket-building endeavors have enriched the lives of the college students involved. "You gain a lot of confidence, because there’s a lot of stuff that you wouldn’t dream even of doing, you know, on your own," says Shane Skenandore, an accounting and business major who has been with the team since they built their first rocket, Golden Eagle. Holly Furcho, who works on the team’s Website and has helped a bit with the construction of some of the rockets, believes these projects have broadened her vision of her own capabilities. "It makes me, maybe in the future want to look into more than just business," says Furcho, " It makes me realize that I’m not just business material; I can be other material, too." People at the College of Menominee Nation hope that the rocket building projects there equip Native American students in particular to compete with their peers in the sciences. "Traditionally, that’s not where Native American people have been. Native American people have not been in the sciences, so if we can do something here to get them into the sciences, that when they go to the larger universities, they can compete with all the other people there, because they [can] say, ‘I can do that!’" says Five Clans Rocket Team President Dan Hawk. Visit the Five Clans Rocket Team’s Website by clicking on the link below this article. Related Links Copyright © 2008, WSAW CBS-7 News. |
