Guild of SITHS

Throughout the school, wall murals have been painted to represent different aspects of the curriculum and the SI Tech environment. This past year, senior Si Ting (Jess) Liu led members of the Art Club in designing and painting a mural representing Russian culture, with a focus on ballet, music, architecture, literature, and folklore/mythology. Jess also painted a mural based off timeless history, focused on the European age of exploration. The most recent project, completed over summer 2018, was a mural representing student health and wellness, in collaboration with STAR club. The lines of a heartbeat stretch throughout the mural, connecting things that stress students out and flowing into things that destress students.

This past year, a group of students built Staten Island Tech's first underwater robot and entered it into the MATE ROV competition. The Marine Advanced Technology Education (MATE) center uses underwater robots (remotely operated vehicles or ROVs) as a way to get students of all ages excited about science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM). Students experience a wide range of educational opportunities from designing and building workshops to competitions that focus on real- world ROV missions, which expose students to STEM fields and help them envision pathways to these careers.
ROVs are also a great way to introduce engineering design, entrepreneurship, and project management to middle and high school students, as described in the Next Generation of Science Standards. Designing and building a ROV for a specific mission takes students through the design process, encouraging them to think creatively to research, test, and evaluate solutions. It also challenges them to organize their time and resources, all the while working toward a deadline. Most importantly, students learn the importance of communication through the project's emphasis on teamwork and collaboration. For a complete overview of the competition, please click here.

Two of our students, Amandeep Singh and Kazi Jawad, are in the process of developing a solar-powered drone. Their current challenge is figuring out how to connect the solar cells so that the total draw of the entire drone is matched by the electricity generated by the solar panels, creating an efficient system. The goal of their project is to break the current world record for drone flight time, just over 2 hours, which was set by a gas-powered drone.

Students Daniel Indictor and Dominick Villamor created a supplementary shortcut keyboard that combined common key combinations into a single press. In order to complete their project, they learned how to integrate circuits, embed system programs, and PCB manufacture. This knowledge also helped them build an ergonomic keyboard as part of their SERP class.

Making the most out of Tech’s MakerSpace, a team of seven students created an interactive tetris table. They utilized over 200 LED lights to represent the ‘tetromino’ blocks and programmed the system using Arduino. They turned what was once an arcade game into a life-size interactive experience on a completely new platform, showcasing SI Tech students’ creativity.