Area Teams Earn Awards in PLTW Competition at STLCC-Florissant Valley

More than 100 students from 21 area high schools recently participated in the Greater St. Louis Project Lead the Way Competition hosted by the engineering and technology department at St. Louis Community College-Florissant Valley.

The competition, which used the Project Lead the Way curriculum, required students to solve an engineering problem by creating, designing and building a solution during the morning session. In the afternoon session, they demonstrated their solution. 

This year’s challenge was the Windy 500. Teams of five students were given a challenge to create a vehicle with at least two wheels that was propelled by fans down two different courses. The students were given 2.75 hours to design, document, test, build, retest, and rebuild the vehicles.

Industry mentors helped guide the teams to workable solutions to navigate a course and then compete in a double elimination race.  

While these students worked on the brainteaser, an additional 50 students toured the College's Center for Workforce Innovation and the Engineering building.  All the students then cheered during the competition.

The teams were judged in three categories: overall, teamwork and presentation. 

The overall winner was Oakville, followed by Liberty in second place and St. Clair in third place. In the teamwork category, Fort Zumwalt East placed first, St. Clair placed second and Oakville third. Mehlville earned first place for presentation, followed by Holt in second place and Hazelwood Central in third place.

“It’s always exciting to watch students go to work and in this year’s case, apply critical-thinking skills to build and test-drive vehicles in keeping with the theme of Windy 500. I could tell they were having a blast,” said Thomas McGovern, Florissant Valley's dean of STEM. “As they make decisions about what they will do professionally, I hope today comes to mind and that we find we’ve laid the groundwork to inspire future STEM leaders.” 

Corporate sponsors for the competition included Brinkmann Constructors, Capital Innovators, EFK Moen, HOK, the Missouri Department of Transportation, and TWM Inc.