Written by: Sarah Barban ([email protected])
Students from Technology Students Associations across the state gathered at the Delaware State Fairgrounds in Harrington April 25-26 for the association’s annual conference. The two-day event gave 619 students from 34 schools an opportunity to compete in categories such as model rocketry; dragster design; and transportation modeling, in which students were tasked with designing bridges.
Mike Fitzgerald, TSA state advisor, was in charge of planning the event and overseeing the activities at the conference.
“TSA is a career and technology student organization,” he said. “The intent is for it to support classroom instruction in science, engineering, technology and math and to get kids careers in those fields.”
TSA has even its youngest students thinking about their future career.
“I really like architecture and engineering,” said Will Jordan, an eighth-grade student from Springer Middle School in Wilmington who participated in electrical applications, bridge building and system control, in which students built robots out of legos.
For Alexis Evans, TSA was a good way to make friends. “When I came to Mount Pleasant High school I didn’t have many friends, but then I joined TSA and I made lots of friends and that’s how I met my boyfriend,” Evans said.
TSA offers students the opportunity to get involved in school but it also gives them the opportunity to showcase their skills at competitions like last week’s state conference, which is just the first step for some. Students who placed in the top three in any of the 53 categories qualify to move on to the national TSA conference in Orlando, Fla.
