Mitchell School District is "blessed" by the expertise of its teachers, according to school board members.
On Monday, Mitchell Board of Education members commended Tricia Neugebauer as the recipient of the 2016 Kelly Lane Earth and Space Science Grant; and Julie Olson as the 2016 recipient of the Robert E. Yager award and co-presenter at two sessions at the National Science Teachers Association Convention in Nashville, Tennessee.
"We are blessed to have your expertise," Board President Deb Olson said.
Mitchell High School Principal Joe Childs presented the teachers to board members during their regular meeting at the Mitchell Career and Technical Education Academy, commending Neugebauer and Olson for their innovation and effort.
"We're lucky to have someone who's willing to put in the time and effort," Childs said of Neugebauer.
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Neugebauer, a science and biomedical teacher at Mitchell High School and MCTEA, received a $5,000 grant to purchase a littleBits library for her physics students. She described littleBits as different kinds of electrical components that can be built into circuits.
"You can use lights, make buzzers, a whole host of different kinds of components that you can put in various circuits," she said. "I'm going to ask my physics students to basically build a model of a house, including those components."
Students will then have to market the house once it's built. Her goal is to help her students better understand circuits. She learned of the award last week in Huron during the annual joint conference for the South Dakota Science Teachers Association and South Dakota Council of Teachers of Mathematics.
Childs also introduced Olson, who teaches advanced biology and honors chemistry at MHS and science at Second Chance High School. According to the National Science Teachers Association website, the Robert E. Yager Excellence in Teaching Award is a national award that recognizes "excellence and innovation in the field of science education."
The $2,000 award provides Olson with $1,000 in support to attend the National Congress on Science Education in July in Denver. At the congress, Olson said a top winner will be announced who receives another $1,500 to present at the 2017 National Science Teachers Association conference in Los Angeles.
In addition to the Robert E. Yager award, Olson said she also recently was awarded a $1,400 grant from Sanford Research, through the Sanford PROMISE Ambassador program. She said the grant will allow her advanced biology students to study ethics and neurobiology on cockroaches.
"It was that or chickens," she said with a smile.
Olson said her students will compare robotic cockroaches with cyborg cockroaches, like RoboRoach, which allows students to wirelessly control the movement of a cockroach by microstimulation of the antenna nerves. Olson said students will compare the two, and discuss the ethics of using such technology.
