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Oak Ridge Schools (ORS) is located in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. ORS offers a holistic, STEM-based experience to students to ensure preparation for future lives and careers. The district has re-branded their STEM acronym to stand for "Students and Teachers Energizing Minds." This was created with the idea that the all-inclusive learning that occurs in STEM-based classrooms involves not just Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math subject matter, but also the essential elements of collaboration, communication, creativity, and critical thinking. These are commonly called “The 4 Cs” and are widely recognized as workplace skills that increase productivity. By focusing on the 4Cs, teachers have taken ownership of our STEM-based model for engaging with students and energizing their minds, coming up with problems and solutions that were unforeseen. This ownership of STEM-based learning was recently validated by AdvancED, an accreditation body who recognized Oak Ridge Schools as the first district in Tennessee and second in the world to achieve AdvancED STEM certification in every school in the district!
Dr. Borchers has been the superintendent of Oak Ridge Schools in Tennessee since 2013. Dr. Borchers earned a Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota, master’s degrees from Wayne State College and the University of South Dakota, and a bachelor’s degree from Morningside College.
Cube Satellite
Students from Robertsville Middle School will be sending a Cube Satellite into space in October of this year! Students named the satellite "RamSat." Frank Brogan, the US Department of Education Assistant Secretary for Elementary and Secondary Education heard about this project and paid a visit to the school.
Students talked about the creation of their mission to track regrowth of vegetation after the devastation of the Gatlinburg fires. While RamSat is orbiting Earth, students will capture images from an onboard camera and audio signals communicating to a ham radio station in their classroom.
Read more about it and view more photos here: https://www.ortn.edu/assistant-secretary-frank-brogan-visits-robertsville-middle-school/
Drones and Aeronautics Career Exploration
Students in James Mitchell’s 7th and 8th grade Aeronautics Career Exploration course at Jefferson Middle School are learning how to build and fly drones. The Oak Ridge school district administration and staff have recognized the importance of aviation to our city's future, and want to expose our students to a multitude of career possibilities within this field. We have begun this journey by introducing a new Career Exploration in Aviation course at Jefferson Middle School. In this course, students are introduced to aviation career options in the field such as air traffic control, private and commercial airline pilots, craft design, and a host of applications for unmanned aircraft. This course can seamlessly articulate into a STEM Engineering, Transportation/Automotive Maintenance, and/or our brand new Navy JROTC program courses.
The importance of unmanned aircraft has increased in daily applications as well as in our nation's military. Some descriptions of needs for unmanned aircraft technology include jobs that are too dangerous, dirty, dull, demanding, or different. Dangerous applications are those involving a high potential for death or injury to a human crew. Dirty applications include operating in situations with chemical, biological, radiological, or nuclear materials. Dull applications are repetitive tasks need to be automated to save costs and human energy. Demanding applications include high-endurance applications for either the flight crew, the aircraft performance, or both, with the ability of eliminating weight and volume of flight crew and provide freedom in aircraft design. Different applications are those that are not feasible for manned aircraft, such as getting organic intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance in the military field.
Cyber Security
Our competitive Cyber Patriot Team received a banner from the US Air Force Academy for the 2019 Open Division Gold 3rd Place Award. Oak Ridge High School first participated as a team in the 2016-2017 CyberPatriot program competition, and have received top honors each year. Oak Ridge High School computer science instructor, Keith Jackson and community member, Mike Hylton are the mentors. Cyber Patriot is the National Youth Cyber Education Program whose mission is to spark the interest of our nation’s youth in the area of cyber security and other STEM education and career paths. This year (2019-2020), the number of Oak Ridge High School teams expanded to include an all-female team and an all-NJROTC team!
