Boat race brings practical experience to classroom education

Take key concepts and put together a friendly competition and you have a good start in helping young people learn.

A competition promoting Project Lead the Way, an organization that promotes education and preparation for college engineering programs, recently was held at the Student Aquatic Center at Southeast Missouri State University. Students were challenged to construct a cardboard boat, navigate obstacles and proceed across the pool. The idea was that students would record boat measurements, calculate their buoyancy and compete to see which boat (and team members) traveled the quickest.

Four teams, each consisting of two students, participated in the first-year event, which was hosted by Cape Girardeau Career and Technology Center, Southeast Missouri State University Recreation Services and Project Lead The Way. The students were creative with their boats, and, based on the photos that appeared with the Aug. 17 story in the Southeast Missourian, the experienced proved to be fun.

It's key that young people have opportunities to see how classroom education meets practical results. These were only cardboard boxes, but in the future it could be these students who design real ships, cars and other machinery that requires engineering knowledge.

We salute the event organizers and the students who participated.