Aviation STEM Day

By Sam Hays

The incredible feats that aviation has accomplished often go unnoticed today. We as a society have gotten complacent with the idea of airplanes, how they work and how phenomenal they are. Luckily, Pryor High School is looking to make students excited about learning skills and techniques to build their own flying machines.

On March 9, Students from all over Oklahoma gathered for an Aviation STEM Day. 

“It was a day that all aeronautic classes from around the district went to Pryor Oklahoma to challenge each other's skills of aeronautical engineering by building things like hot air balloons, paper airplanes, stomp rockets and being able to see schools that can help this passion become a career,” Adrien Carrasco explains. 

The competitions that these students competed in were very high stakes. They spent months building their flying machines, and this was the day to test them; the day that the students had been waiting for.

“[The competitions were] Very competitive. A lot of people put so much time and effort into building their projects, and to fail felt like a very irritating feeling,” Carrasco states. 

The Owasso Aeronautics class did fairly well in the competitions.

Noah Reynolds says, “We didn’t place in paper airplanes or stomp rockets, but we got third in the hot air balloons.”  

This friendly competition gave students the opportunity to show off their knowledge of Aeronautics to tech schools and colleges who were there to watch.

“There were a lot of colleges and flight schools there that helped us try and find out if we were interested in going to school for aeronautics,” Reynolds proclaims. 

The Aeronautic STEM Day was a terrific opportunity for students to find a path to take after high school in anything related to aviation. 

Carrasco says, “It gave us students the opportunity to meet people in the fields we may have an interest in, as well as an opportunity to see all of the schools we might have thought of going to and speaking to the admission reps to figure out a plan on how they will get you into their school and what you need to do to get the opportunity to go to that school.” 

STEM Day seemed to motivate students to get more involved in Aeronautics by using friendly competitions to bring the best out of students. With more students getting excited about Aeronautics, aviation will certainly continue to grow among the younger generations as students explore new technologies through STEM.