STEM / DRONE

Technology and creative thinking make so many advances in our daily lives it’s often hard to keep up. It’s up to parents to take advantage of local resources. 100 Black Men of Dekalb (100BOMOD) recognizes that through the support of camps, programs and museums that emphasize STEAM (science, technology, engineering, art, and math) for our youth is vital to their growth and development.

Therefore in 2015 100 BMOD implemented the STEM/STEAM program.  The program focuses on providing students in Middle and High School opportunities to participate in national competitions. The pilot school was Ronald E McNair Middle School. McNair Middle School participated in the G3 Robotics competitions each year since 2016. In 2017, McNair Middle won first place in the National Drone Competition.

100 BMOD has sponsored over 300 kids and roughly 30 teams to participate in competitions since 2015. The focus of the STEM program is also providing opportunities in the areas of Drones, Robotics, and Lego. The Drone competitions involve having the students uniquely build the drones to navigate through an obstacle course, solve a problem in the community and to do a presentation that helps facilitate problem-solving and presentation skills.

This STEM-based camp also provides hands-on aviation experience for rising sixth-grade through 12th-grade students. Students are exposed to careers in aviation through field trips to airports and other aviation facilities, including component testing and assembly. The culminating experience will be a team build-off competition, where students will be challenged to build and fly an aircraft they design.