Sea - Tech 4H Club
The Skagit Exploration And Marine Technology 4H Club
Sea-Tech is a science and technology 4-H club started in January of 2001. Sea-Tech 4-H club is on the cutting edge of current educational movements across the country. Both educational institutions and the business community recognize a need to encourage Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math; the four elements of STEM. As a STEM based 4-H program, Sea-Tech accomplishes these goals using the experiential learning model emphasized in all 4-H programs.
The club's name, Sea-Tech, is an acronym for Skagit Exploration And marine TECHnology. Sea-Tech was founded to inspire students to pursue STEM based studies by capturing their imagination with the excitement of underwater exploration. The hands-on experience offered by the club provides students an opportunity to learn and apply basic engineering skills essential to solving complex problems. Designing and constructing an underwater vehicle, commonly called a remotely operated vehicle (ROV), which can perform useful tasks, is a challenging and rewarding experience filled with many opportunities to solve complex problems.
The objective of the club is to provide a safe and challenging environment where secondary school students can develop an appreciation for marine related topics in science and engineering, as well as technologies related to the design, construction and operation of ROV’s. Report assignments, team competitions, and group projects are designed to advance the students understanding in a variety of technical areas, and the underlying physical principles behind them. Club activities encourage the development of critical thinking skills and creative problem solving. Team competitions promote teamwork skills and opportunities for collaboration between student teams involved in the same technical endeavor.
To date, club teams have designed and built forty ROV’s, for the purpose of demonstration or competition in regional and international events. Each ROV is complete with video cameras, lights, manipulators, sensors and remote control. In addition the club students have built a full-scale mockup of a shallow submergence mini-sub; refurbished and operated a hyper-baric test chamber that can simulate pressure to ocean depths of 1650 feet; and designed and programmed an underwater virtual piloting simulator. The students have assembled and staffed displays for twelve county fairs, numerous school science fairs, a showcase display for the National 4-H Educators Conference, and hosted field trips focused on science and marine technology related topics.
Sea-Tech 4-H began as a home school class project twelve years ago. Since 2007 the club has sent twenty-one teams to regional and international competitions hosted by the Marine Advanced Technology Education Center (MATE Center). Sea-Tech teams have participated at three different levels of competition: the novice Scout Class; the secondary school Ranger Class, and the collegiate Explorer Class. Every team is required to complete a predetermined set of mission tasks with their custom designed and built ROV; present their project to a panel of judges through written and verbal communication, and create a poster display summarizing their ROV project.
Sea-Tech teams have won numerous awards at these MATE sponsored Regional and International Competitions including:
- 2008 MATE Regional Competition - Team Anglerfish “Team Spirit Award”
- 2008 MATE International Competition - Team Genesis "gROVer" Award
- 2009 MATE PNW Regional Challenge - Team Orca “3rd Place Ranger
- 2009 MATE International Competition - Team Genesis 3rd Place Explorer Class, "Sharkpedo" Award, Safe Practices Award
- 2010 MATE PNW Regional Challenge - Team Orca 1st Place Ranger; Team Sailfish 3rd Place Ranger Class
- 2010 MATE International Competition - Michael Janicki awarded Ranger Class Engineering MVP
- 2011 MATE PNW Regional Challenge - Team Endeavor 1st Place Ranger; Team Neptune 2nd Place Ranger; Team Hydrozilla 4th place Ranger
- 2011 MATE International Competition - Stanley Janicki awarded "gROVer" Award; Team Omega “Top Technical Report” Explorer Class
- 2011 MTS $10K National Scholarship – Trevor Uptain
- 2011 Macintyre Scholarship – Fabrianne Walker
- 2012 MATE PNW Regional Challenge - Team Endeavor II 1st Place Ranger; Team Econtra 3rd Place Ranger; Team Arctic Fox 2nd place Scout and “Most Elegant ROV Design”
- 2012 MATE International Competition - Stanley Janicki awarded the prestigious "Flying Fish" recognizing one individual’s innovation and ingenuity amongst all the students participating in the competition event.