Newsroom

TARC Team Rockets to White House

Rockets, robots, and a variety of other science experiments were featured at the second White House Science Fair February 7.  Janet Nieto, Gwynelle Condino and Ana Nieto from Presidio High School, and Landon Fisher from Rockwall-Heath High School presented the rockets they had built for competition in the annual Team America Rocketry Challenge.

Surrounded by rockets painted with cherry blossoms,  stars and stripes and a variety of other patriotic patterns, the girls from Presidio discussed with President Obama some of the challenges that are presented annually by participating in TARC. After their discussion, the President bid farewell to Janet, Gwynelle and Ana, joining in a traditional team hug.

After meeting with the science fair participants and learning about their experiments, President Obama pointed out the Presidio team during his remarks noting, “There’s a rocketry team from Presidio, Texas … This is part of the fourth-poorest school district in the state of Texas. And I was told that teachers cooked food to sell after church, supporters drove 200 miles to pick up donuts for bake sales, they even raffled off a goat … just so they could raise enough money for the rocketry team to compete,” the president continued. “And the majority of the kids at the school are ESL, English as a second language.  And the presentation they made could not make you prouder.”

“There’s a rocketry team from Presidio, Texas … This is part of the fourth-poorest school district in the state of Texas. And I was told that teachers cooked food to sell after church, supporters drove 200 miles to pick up donuts for bake sales, they even raffled off a goat … just so they could raise enough money for the rocketry team to compete,” the president continued. “And the majority of the kids at the school are ESL, English as a second language. And the presentation they made could not make you prouder.”

Aside from receiving presidential acknowledgement for one of the program’s most successful teams, TARC has additional accomplishments to be proud of. This May, TARC is celebrating 10 years as a leading STEM program, helping students rocket into their futures in the fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics. From the Texas teams, Janet is pursuing aerospace engineering at Texas Tech, Landon is waiting on an acceptance letter for the engineering program at MIT, and Ana is planning to apply to schools with aerospace engineering programs.

Source: anne.ward[at]aia-aerospace.org