Retired engineer sparks Licking County students' interest with STEM projects
UTICA ― With Intel fast approaching in Licking County, Granville's Mark Morscher is a man on a mission.
The retired electrical and computer engineer, a 1989 graduate of Ohio State University's College of Engineering, is the county coordinator for the college's program trying to demystify and spark interest among K-12 students in engineering and STEM, which stands for science, technology, engineering and math.
OSU professor Betty Lise Anderson started the program in 2008, and it has reached more than 41,000 kids — including over 2,000 by Morscher.
"He has extended our outreach out to Licking County, where we can’t get to easily," Anderson said. "He is a natural with kids and a great explainer. He single-handedly kept the K-12 engineering program going during COVID, recruiting other OSU alumni to help virtually from all over. Mark has also suggested improvements to our existing project and created new learning materials that we are adopting.
"He is a force! And he can explain forces."
Morscher travels the county and has visited five Licking County school districts this school year, along with The Works (where he coaches the robotics team) and the Licking County Family YMCA. The STEM projects are hands-on, can usually be done during one class period and taken home; materials are free.
"I love pushing engineering. Middle school is the sweet spot, really, fourth through eighth grade," said Morscher, who also works with elementary and intermediate schools as well as high schools.
Last week, he was in science teacher Bethany Watson's class at Utica Middle School teaching the STEM club how to build a CD spectrometer. Using old cracker and cereal boxes and CDs, students constructed a simple device that shows the color spectrum and learning about where light comes from, its different wavelengths and how it combines to make different colors.
"It's science and engineering principles, and we discuss them before doing the project," Morscher explained. "It's simple materials, and they can take them home and show their families."
It was his sixth trip to Utica this school year, and another is planned May 3. He also has been to Lakewood, Granville, Newark and Northridge schools.
"It's a small group of students here (at Utica), and they're really engaged," Morscher said.
Watson said the students who come have a big interest in science and furthering their knowledge.
"It's something they don't see in other classes," Watson said. "It gives them an engineering and science-related experience, and you can see them express that spark."
Utica eighth grader C.J. Melancon especially liked doing a smart lighting project, which involved wiring a circuit with a breadboard.
"It's fun to be able to build it and take it home," he said. "Then you can tear it down, rebuild it and bring it back to the teacher."
"We're able to do a lot of things that we're not able to do in any other class," said sixth grader Chloe Meek.
Classmates Cloey Schwenke and Joslyn Snyder both noted they would be interested in STEM jobs when they got older. "It's a fun experience with experimenting," Snyder said.
Sixth grader Cody Baker spoke highly of the work.
"We can take these home to family members and they can play with it," he said. "And you can try to make it at home."
Morscher said the most popular project has been building a speaker from paper, wire and a magnet.
"You plug it into a phone or laptop, and it works. You can hear the sound," he said. "Another popular one is jumping jacks, where you use an electromagnetic coil to make it jump into the air."
The day after he was at Utica, Morscher went to Granville Elementary and they did something known as the Cartesian diver, where you make something filled with air sink in a container of water.
"It shows how a submarine works and teaches how water is displaced," he said.
Fourth through seventh graders at Granville and Lakewood learned how to build a circuit to light up a magic wand, then progressed to making an LED flashlight. Morscher also taught the magic wand to 72 students at The Works during Night at the Museum.
Next month, Morscher will show Granville high schoolers how to light up an LED in one circuit without even touching the circuit with a battery. The wireless energy transfer project takes two days, one for a lecture and the next for construction.
He has been at Lakewood Middle School and the district's Jackson Intermediate for several projects.
"Mark has been a great resource for our students. He has shared his knowledge and expertise with our after school STEM and tech clubs, leading them through hands-on lessons with circuits," Lakewood STEM coordinator Dee Martindale said. "He also spent the day at our middle school helping all our seventh graders build their own flashlights. Mark is passionate about STEM and is eager to help students get excited about learning. We are very thankful for his support."
Morscher instructed 75 Northridge Elementary students how to build jumping jacks, and 58 more at Newark's Carson Elementary learned about spectrometers. He said he wants to reach as many districts, classes and students in Licking County as possible.
"I am hoping to have reached over 1,500 students by the end of this school year," he said. "I have bandwidth to do much more next year. As I am doing this, I am trying to establish a bootstrap program, so others can do it, too. And I can help them."
740-704-7973
Instagram: @dfweidig
This article originally appeared on Newark Advocate: Engineer sparks Licking County students' interest with STEM projectss
