Morgan City High seniors showcase ‘life skill’ projects

Morgan City High School seniors showcased their talents Tuesday during the Senior Project Showcase.
The event showcases the efforts of English 4 honors students who elected to undertake the senior project in addition to their required curriculum.
Students are required to write an extensive research paper, complete at least 20 hours of work toward a project, compile a comprehensive portfolio and present their projects to the community. For their projects, students are required to choose projects that will provide them with a challenge, teacher Leslie Smith said.
The 28 students who completed the projects this fall included tackled subjects ranging from blacksmithing, holistic medicine and Latin dancing to robotics, high-power rocketry and developing an app.
Smith said she tells students the project is not about the product, the paper or the grade.
“It’s about the life skills learned,” she said.
Students learn that they have to plan in advance and that sometimes people will let you down but you have to pick yourself up and troubleshoot the problem, Smith added.
Diana Tran had to do just that when 50+ programs she had written for the robot she built were lost due to a laptop malfunction.
She said only about 10 of the 63 total programs she wrote survived, but she didn’t give up “because the knowledge I had acquired writing them was still there,” she said.
For her project, in which a robot performs various maneuvering tasks, she spent about 55 hours writing the programing and about five hours assembling the robot.
Tran is planning to attend the University of Louisiana at Lafayette and major in mechanical engineering.
Smith said she was impressed with the number of students, especially females, who undertook engineering projects this term.
“In education and industry the trend is toward STEM,” she said. STEM is an acronym referring to the academic disciplines of science, technology, engineering and mathematics.
Callie Breaux built a rocket that she can’t launch until March. That’s because you have to be 18 to legally launch a high-powered rocket.
When she does, she will be the first female in the state to certify in launching such equipment and the first high school student to earn two of the three levels of certification in one day, Breaux said.
She was inspired to take on the project because she’s always been fascinated by rocketry but had put it aside to pursue other interests. When someone suggested she consider it for her project, she said it made perfect sense.
“It’s revisiting an old dream,” Breaux said.
Breaux is considering a career in mechanical engineering.