Mobile County JROTC cadets expecting a week of physical training instead found themselves in a college engineering lab and out on Dauphin Island studying marine biology, part of a new academic push layered on top of the program’s traditional drills.
The 126 cadets taking part make up the inaugural class of the Mobile County JROTC STEM Academy, a weeklong program centered on science, technology, engineering and math. Participants come from 11 different high schools across the county and have spent the week staying in dorms at Spring Hill College while working on team projects, hearing from motivational speakers and touring local industry sites.
“We’re using engineering as the hook to bring relevance to the math and sciences,” said Susan Pruet, president of STEMWorks LLC and a former teacher who helped design the academy’s curriculum. Pruet said the program is aimed less at students who already gravitate toward STEM fields and more at those who have never had the chance to discover an interest in them.
During the week, cadets toured sites including Evonik, Austal USA, the Dauphin Island Sea Lab and BAE Southeast Shipyards along the Mobile River, alongside a full day at the University of South Alabama’s College of Engineering. Activities ranged from building catapults to exploring basic physics through a classic Heron’s fountain water experiment.
For some cadets, the week reshaped how they see their own interests. One sophomore who toured the university campus said she was surprised to find herself enjoying the material, describing engineering in particular as more interesting than she expected and something that gave her new ideas to think about. Another cadet said seeing an actual college classroom helped ease worries he’d had about large, unfamiliar lecture halls, calling the experience different but far from uncomfortable.
Mobile County Public Schools JROTC Director Lt. Col. (ret.) Frank Barrow, who has helped launch several career-pipeline programs for county cadets in recent years, said he hopes to grow the STEM Academy into a statewide camp. Organizers set an initial fundraising goal of $80,000 to launch the program and ultimately raised more than $120,000, money that will help fund next year’s session. The academy is loosely modeled on the leaderSTATE program at Mississippi State University.
Barrow said he eventually wants to combine the STEM Academy with the statewide JROTC Cadet Leadership Camp, hosting both in Mobile County. He described the underlying goal as helping cadets recognize potential in themselves they might not have otherwise seen. “A teacher is nothing more than a mirror,” he said, “and if he or she is successful, that child looks in that mirror and recognizes the potential that exists within them.”