East Central High School Science Club

The East Central High School Science Club is a female-led student team that participates in large-scale STEM competitions.

Two years ago, our team was one of eight high school groups across the country to participate in the Lemelson-MIT InvenTeams program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. For that program, we researched, designed, and constructed a portable wildfire shelter. We were also chosen to represent Mississippi in the Samsung Solve-For-Tomorrow competition for two consecutive years.

Last year, the ECHS Science Club was chosen to participate in the NASA Human Exploration Rover Challenge (HERC), a competition that has students design, build, and test human-powered vehicles capable of traversing an obstacle course filled with challenging terrain and various mission tasks. The course is designed to simulate the surface of the Moon and Mars. Teams also must design and build a task tool to complete these tasks. These tasks involve collecting water samples from various hidden sources. Additionally, teams are tasked with involving younger students in a large-scale STEM-related education project related to NASA rovers and tool design. The ECHS Science Club was very successful at this competition, taking home the “Phoenix” award for being the most improved team.

This year, we are taking on the NASA HERC once again. We have taken on this project to promote STEM innovation and invention in our region for student groups of all ages and backgrounds. Our team has researched the vehicles used in previous competitions, analyzed our performance last year, and incorporated our own unique ideas to develop a vehicle that reflects the unique perspective we hope to share with the teams from around the world.

Our Science Club is so excited to travel to the NASA center to race our unique rover. However, the ECHS Science Club is responsible for the costs of materials, construction, and travel costs for our team and vehicle to and from Huntsville, AL.