Outreach
Middle School STEM Events
The STEM Center hosts a number of STEM events just for middle-school students throughout the year. Middle School STEM Day workshops are offered on a Saturday in March and in October, where students participate in a variety of hands-on STEM activities, and interact with USNA midshipmen.
Summer Heroes Youth Program
The USNA STEM Center presents the Summer Heroes Youth Program (SHYP) reaching middle-school students in the region, including inner-city Baltimore and Washington, DC. A team of USNA midshipmen and faculty visit local schools and provide an engaging program for students to explore science and engineering through hands-on activities.
Summer STEM Program
The STEM Center and the Office of Admissions host this success oriented, project-based curriculum for rising 9th, 10th and 11th graders. Three week-long camp sessions are held in June, with 330 students per session. Students from around the country stay on campus at Bancroft Hall during this residential program. USNA faculty and staff with support from midshipmen present a wide range of activities under the theme "Land, Air and Sea: Exploring Navy Technology on All Fronts", including: optimizing hull design, building circuits, cyber security, biotechnology, storm chasing, the physics of light, robotics, and much more.
SeaPerch Programs
SeaPerch is a national underwater remotely operated vehicle (ROV) program sponsored by the Office of Naval Research (ONR) and Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International (AUVSI). Each April, USNA hosts the Maryland Regional SeaPerch Challenge for middle school and high school teams. As part of classroom or after school programs, students build SeaPerch underwater remotely-operated vehicles (ROVs) and enter them in the competition. Learn more about SeaPerch.
MESA Day
In collaboration with Maryland Mathematics Engineering Science Achievement (MESA), twice a year USNA midshipmen and faculty stage a full day of hands-on activities for hundreds of elementary students from local counties and Baltimore City at Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory. Students engage in interactive activities focused on topics such as robotics, hull design, fluids principles, chemistry, materials properties, and more, as well as mini engineering design competitions.
STEM Underway Trips
The STEM Center sponsors outreach trips for faculty and midshipmen to locations in the U.S. and around the world to promote STEM education. Recent trips include: schools in Dallas, TX; St. Louis, MO; Detroit, MI; Fleet Week in San Diego, CA, and more.
STEM on Deck Events
In collaboration with the Office of Admissions, high schools from locations around the U.S. send small groups of students to visit USNA for an overnight visit or a long weekend. The students get a tour of the technical majors and spend time engaged in interactive science and engineering activities, such as experiments in the wind tunnel, investigating buoyancy in the Hydro Lab, programming robots, and more.
Science and Engineering Festivals & Fleet Weeks
The STEM Center hosts a booth at Science and Engineering Festivals as well as Navy and Fleet Week events around the nation. The USNA Booth provides many of our most popular and portable activities including straw rockets, electrical etching of dog tags, buoyancy challenges, cryptography & puzzles, and more. Faculty and midshipmen travel each year to San Diego, CA to host a booth at the San Diego Festival of Science and Engineering.
Science Fair Judging
USNA faculty and midshipmen serve as judges at local and regional science fairs. Faculty participate as judges in support of the annual National Junior Science and Humanities Symposium (JSHS) sponsored by U.S. Army, Navy and Air Force, as well as the International Science and Engineering Fair (ISEF).
Family STEM Day
The STEM Center hosts an annual Family STEM event each fall, open for Naval Academy faculty/staff and their families to experience interactive STEM activities led by STEM midshipmen. A Family STEM Night has been held in lab spaces including the Hydro Lab, Aero Lab and planetarium, with hands-on activities for all ages including robotics, rockets, circuits, and more.
