Ger­ard Best

A for­mer NASA as­tro­naut, the Min­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion and the Cana­di­an High Com­mis­sion­er were among sev­er­al high-pro­file voic­es to praise North­gate Col­lege at the award cer­e­mo­ny for the glob­al Cubes in Space pro­gramme.

Cubes in Space is an in­ter­na­tion­al con­test in which teams of sec­ondary school stu­dents com­pete by de­vel­op­ing sci­ence, tech­nol­o­gy, en­gi­neer­ing or math­e­mat­ics-based (STEM) ex­per­i­ments for launch in­to space. North­Gate Col­lege's T&T-based cam­pus won the top prize for its ex­per­i­ment de­sign.

Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Tim Gopeesingh ap­plaud­ed the school's stu­dents, teach­ers, prin­ci­pal and par­ents "for en­cour­ag­ing our stu­dents to move in­to the realm of STEM ed­u­ca­tion", adding that said STEM was al­so a strong point of fo­cus for his min­istry.

Sev­en­teen North­Gate Col­lege stu­dents re­ceived awards per­son­al­ly hand­ed out by the for­mer US Na­tion­al Aero­nau­tics and Space Ad­min­is­tra­tion (NASA) as­tro­naut Dr Robert Crouch at the cer­e­mo­ny, which was host­ed at the High Com­mis­sion­er's res­i­dence in Fair­ways, Mar­aval on Sep­tem­ber 26.

"I un­der­stand that your de­sign was quite spec­tac­u­lar," High Com­mis­sion­er G�rard Lat­ul­lipe said. "To im­press NASA as­tro­nauts re­al­ly speaks vol­umes about your in­no­va­tion."

Each stu­dent got a signed lith­o­graph from Crouch, who de­liv­ered the keynote ad­dress.The NASA sci­en­tist said the stu­dents' ex­per­i­ment was "to­tal­ly unique". He com­mend­ed them for do­ing the "the amount of hard work" need­ed to re­search and de­vel­op the idea be­hind the pro­pos­al, and laud­ed their per­sis­tence in de­sign­ing and build­ing the ex­per­i­ment, which was even­tu­al­ly sub­mit­ted to NASA for space launch.

The ex­per­i­ment, which sought to mea­sure how much elec­tric­i­ty is gen­er­at­ed by an ob­ject mov­ing through the ionos­phere, fit in­to a cube about the size of a ba­by's fist.

But North­Gate Col­lege Di­rec­tor Yolande La Pierre said the re­al val­ue har­vest­ed from the ex­er­cise went far be­yond the sci­ence ex­per­i­ment it­self.

"The last­ing les­son from Cubes in Space 2014 is the val­ue of help­ing our chil­dren to be crit­i­cal thinkers and to push past the bound­aries of our ge­o­graph­ic lim­i­ta­tions. These chil­dren have be­come bet­ter stu­dents and in­deed bet­ter per­sons as a re­sult of the hard work, dili­gence and thor­ough­ness they had to de­vel­op to emerge as win­ners and they did this as a team."

Robert Sowah, founder of iDoo­dle­Soft­ware, the Cana­di­an com­pa­ny be­hind the glob­al con­test, con­grat­u­lat­ed La Pierre and her staff for dis­tin­guish­ing T&T among a field of glob­al com­peti­tors, point­ing out that North­Gate's win­ning sub­mis­sion was "cho­sen from among hun­dreds around the world".

The lev­el of com­plex­i­ty in the ex­per­i­ment made it stand out from every oth­er en­try, said Chief Ed­u­ca­tion Of­fi­cer of idoo­dle­Soft­ware, Am­ber Agee Dee-Hart, who found­ed the Cubes in Space ini­tia­tive.

Dee-Hart showed the ex­per­i­ment to "sev­er­al NASA sci­en­tists and they were blown away by the com­plex­i­ty of thought, the elo­quence with which they spoke in the pre­sen­ta­tion video that they sub­mit­ted."

"It was quite ex­cep­tion­al," she said.

The Cubes In Space pro­gram is a part­ner­ship be­tween idoo­dle­soft­ware, Ru­bik Learn­ing Ini­tia­tive, the Col­orado Space Grant Con­sor­tium's Rock­Sat-C pro­gram and is sup­port­ed by the Sound­ing Rock­et Pro­gram Of­fice at NASA's Wal­lops Flight Fa­cil­i­ty.

Bevil Wood­ing, speak­ing on be­half of founder and chair­man of North­Gate Col­lege Dr Noel Woodroffe, de­scribed­North­Gate's achieve­ment as "a tes­ta­ment to the po­ten­tial that ex­ists in all our young peo­ple".

"Thi­sis al­so a pow­er­ful re­minder of the im­por­tance of pro­vid­ing our youth with lead­er­ship ex­am­ples and a nur­tur­ing, val­ues-based en­vi­ron­ment to in­spire them to achieve their very best," Wood­ing said.

The prize­giv­ing dou­bled as the glob­al launch of the 2015 Cubes in Space pro­gramme, which tar­gets 11- to 14-year-old stu­dents.

The award cer­e­mo­ny was held in con­junc­tion with the launch of Bright­Path Foun­da­tion's Tech­Link, a sci­ence and tech­nol­o­gy ed­u­ca­tion event, held on Sep­tem­ber 27 at the Cipri­ani Col­lege of Labour and Co­op­er­a­tive Stud­ies, Val­sayn.