High school students graduate from BAE-run STEM program

Swapping out mortarboards for motherboards, 18 high school students on Wednesday went head to head in a robotics challenge as part of a graduation ceremony unlike any other on the campus of Southern New Hampshire University.The students, a mix of juniors and seniors from New Hampshire and Massachusetts, were the latest class of graduates from FOCUS, or Fostering Opportunities for Careers Utilizing STEM, a 10-week after school program run by defense contractor BAE systems that’s designed to prepare students for careers in the fields of science, technology, engineering and math.Over the course of the last 10 weeks, students worked in teams to use robotics kits to develop, engineer and program four-wheeled robots that could pick up plastic rings and place them on designated locations in order to score points inside of a rectangular arena.In addition to the construction of the robots, teams were also tasked with completing their projects within a set time and budget, and introducing their designs in a client presentation such as an engineer would face. “We try to simulate, as best we can, what it would be like to be an engineer,” said BAE engineering development manager Stephanie Livsey, who oversees the company’s FOCUS program.