Our program strives to foster autonomous learners.  Our teachers find opportunities to allow students to explore topics of personal interest.  One of our students shared some great news associated with her personal explorations that affirmed our mission, and we want to share it and celebrate her commitment to exploring her personal interests.

Meet Mihika, or Mahi as she likes to be called.

Mahi has been recognized as a 2024 Cle de Peau Beaute and Girls Who Code “20 under 20” winner.

When Mahi share the news she included this statement:

VBCPS is hosting their annual College Night on October 29th from 5:30-8 pm at the Virginia Beach Convention Center, please promote this event to your students.  Students can connect with representatives from a variety of colleges, universities, proprietary schools, and the military.  There will also be financial aid seminars.  

Students can register for a barcode before College Night at www.StriveFair.com. At College Night, colleges will scan their barcode to send them more information about their schools. The day after College Night, they will receive a report with information on the colleges they scanned. Students do not have to create a StriveScan account to attend College Night. It is an option for students to share their information with schools instead of a handwritten information card.

Each year our sophomores practice networking with our current senior class. Sophomores reach out to seniors with formal letters of request for interviews to discuss senior projects from a student’s perspective, and they share their resumes with seniors to gain insight into how to plan their high school experiences. These steps provide powerful learning experiences to prepare our students to engage with professionals.

This year, however, we experienced a first for our students’ professional networking.  An MSA alumnus read a post following the Tidewater Science and Engineering Fair, zoomed in on a student poster, and realized that the student was doing work that was very similar to his own field. The alumnus reached out through Facebook Messenger–and that’s where this story begins.

Andrew Mitchell, a 2011 Mathematics and Science Academy graduate, has enjoyed all kinds of awesome experiences over the past 14 years.  For his senior project, he completed an internship through the Jefferson Lab.  From there, inspired in large part by his amazing experience with our then band director Leah (Greber) Nelson, he attended VCU pursuing a music education major.

Following a desire to change course direction, Andrew attended Cardiff University in Wales for physics and music.  Upon graduating with his undergraduate degree, Andrew worked as an acoustics consultant and pursued a PhD in environmental acoustics at University College London. He now serves as a lecturer at UCL in urban noise and acoustics and is a Research Fellow focused on soundscape modeling.

When Dr. Mitchell zoomed in on Dylan M.’s research project poster, he realized that he could serve as an expert scientist helping Dylan to refine his work and prepare it for publication. During a recent trip back to the States, Dr. Mitchell included a visit to Ocean Lakes High School to learn more about Dylan’s work.  During the meeting, Dr. Mitchell offered to serve as Dylan’s senior project expert scientist.  They plan to conduct scheduled Zoom meetings this summer as Dylan prepares his work for publication.

Reflecting on the impact and relevance of that meeting, we hope that these kinds of networking moments continue to happen. Building a school culture takes deliberate planning and requires a commitment to the mission and vision of an organization.  Dr. Andrew Mitchell embodies the realization of our program’s vision, and he is now playing an important role in Dylan’s academic and young professional journey.

If you or your child is an MSA alum and would like to serve as a senior project mentor, please reach out to Allison Graves at argraves@vbschools.com.

Too often an organization’s mission and vision statements are just that– statements on marketing materials.  Here, at the Mathematics and Science Academy, they are guiding principles informing our daily work and our program’s development.  Walk into our classrooms, and you’ll see our mission guiding our daily work.  If you attended the Senior Project Gallery Open House on Tuesday, February 6th, you saw first-hand our vision for our students shining through the anticipation our seniors have for their futures.

Mission of the Mathematics & Science Academy

 The Mission of the Mathematics & Science Academy is to provide a rigorous and innovative academic program focused on mathematics and sciencewhich inspires and empowers students to pursue related careers and to make significant contributions to the global community.

Vision  of the Mathematics & Science Academy

The Vision of the Mathematics & Science Academy is to exemplify the best in mathematics and science education through the integration of 21st-century skills, current technologies, and authentic applicationsthat inspire and engage students and which ultimately will be realized in the innovative achievements, leadership, and service of its graduates in associated professions throughout the global community.

We are excited to see our seniors embrace the behaviors, attitudes, and practices that will help them become leaders in their eventual professions.  During the gallery event, seniors networked with underclassmen to encourage and inspire students to explore STEM-related fields. Our event was an open-house poster session modeled after poster sessions often held at universities and professional conferences.  Seniors designed professional posters featuring an overview of their work and links to their portfolios. Several sample posters can be found below.  This event was an opportunity for seniors to speak publicly about their projects and answer questions in a less formal setting than their formal presentations.

Their formal presentations begin at the end of the month.  While those presentations are designed for their peers and underclassmen, they are open to the public.  Feel free to check our schedule (Parent Copy MSA Presentation Schedule-2024). During the event, the senior project advisor met with juniors and their parents.  They are starting their senior project journey now!  If you missed the meeting, you can access a video version and the resources reviewed during the meeting on the Academy Advisor’s Corner page. 

New this year, visitors were able to vote on their favorite senior projects.  To encourage networking, our sophomores and juniors will now reach out to seniors requesting more formal interviews.  This step will help our underclassmen practice their professional letter/email writing, resume preparation, and professional communication skills before reaching out to professionals for their senior projects.

Congratulations to our senior winners!

Missed the gallery?  Here are a few posters spanning a variety of topics.

*Click the image to see it on its own page.

The Mathematics and Science Academy is more than a (well-cared-for) building, is more than a (rigorous and engaging) curriculum, and is more than an (impressive) list of student and program accolades.  The MSA is a special place because of the people who are invested in making our program the best it can be.

It is special because of the teachers who inspire our students to do some pretty great things–like Mr. Sonier, MSA Integrative STEM teacher, who was recently named teacher of the year.  Way to go, Mr. Sonier!

It is special because of the students who are curious and engaged with learning.  A great example of our students’ enthusiasm for learning happened on the second day of school this year. A small group of seniors who are working on senior projects related to cybersecurity were invited to attend the International Test and Evaluation Association (ITEA) cybersecurity conference and to participate in a STEAM Hack Challenge with other area schools.

It is special because of our parents who support student learning and encourage student engagement and autonomy.  The MSA Booster organization is a great example of our parents’ support for our students.  In fact, the Boosters offer yearly project grants to seniors as seed money for senior projects.  Students apply for grant funds after considering factors like impact, sustainability, and budget.  This year five students have been awarded Booster grants.  These grants will fund the first-ever OLHS STEAM Hack Challenge and Cybersecurity Workshop, educational brochures, materials for a robotics engineering design research project, and the printing of a children’s book.

If you are a current or former parent, or if you are an alumnus/alumna of our program, please consider joining our Booster organization.  They do so much for our organization beyond these grants.  They fund student enrichment experiences through an enrichment grant program and through financial support of field trips; they fund three annual scholarships; and, they support teachers with money for lab supplies.

You can support them with your membership and through their fundraising efforts.  Learn more by visiting their webpage and following them on Facebook!

Over spring break, six of the eight eligible MSA students who moved on as the Tidewater Regional Science and Engineering Fair representatives for their respective categories competed in the Virginia State Science and Engineering Fair.  All of the participants represented their work and our school with enthusiasm and professionalism.  We are so proud of them all!

We would like to acknowledge in particular the following awards:

Animal, Behavioral, and Social Sciences

Jenny Vu
Third Place
The Memory Retention of Planaria (Dugesia dorotocephala) after the Removal and Regeneration of the
Cerebral Ganglia and Various Percentages of Body Tissue

Biochemistry and Cellular & Molecular Biology

Reagan Labert
Honorable Mention
Comparison and Analysis of the Compositions of Commercial Kombucha Products

Physics, Math, and Astronomy
Rockwell Li
First Place
Breaking the Limits of Scanning Tunneling Microscopy Using Super Resolution

Software and Embedded Systems

Joshua Bryant
Second Place
Designing and Prototyping and LIDAR Based Haptic Navigation Vest for the Visually Impaired and
Special Forces

Leidos Award for Excellence in Applied Science
Second Place
Joshua Bryant
Designing and Prototyping and LIDAR Based Haptic Navigation Vest for the Visually Impaired and
Special Forces

Today was a great first day of senior presentations! These presenters are setting a high bar for future underclassmen to follow. There are so many exciting events and opportunities for seniors in the coming months. One scholarship available to MSA seniors is open now!

All seniors who have at least one guardian enrolled as a member of our MSA Booster Club are eligible to apply for the MSA Boosters’ Scholarship. The MSA Booster Scholarship Application is live now using the link below. It’s due by 11:59 PM on Saturday, 4/29. http://bit.ly/MSA_Application

Parent not a Booster, yet? It’s not too late to join. This year our boosters have funded senior projects with grants, have supported our Geology field trip to the Blue Ridge, and later in the year, help with the senior recognition ceremony. Here is the link for parents to join: https://sites.google.com/vbschools.com/msab/home

Here at the MSA, we LOVE our parents.  They support student learning in all kinds of ways.  We have had parents serve as guest lecturers, who share how classroom content connects to their professions.  We have had parents serve as valuable mentors, who welcome student shadows (students who aren’t their own children) to learn about a profession as a part of the senior project experience. If you are interested in either of these opportunities to get involved, please contact Allison Graves, the senior project advisor.

However, you don’t have to be a STEM professional directly working with students to be a helpful member of our parent network! Join our MSA Boosters.  The MSA Boosters support student learning through senior project grants, underclassman enrichment program grants, and a senior scholarship.  Student recipients of these opportunities must have at least one parent who is a booster.  Membership in the organization must be renewed each year, but know that these funds directly support our students.  In addition to providing funds for our senior celebration, the Boosters support student work.  Here are two current seniors, who have directly benefited from Booster-supported programs:

Cedrick D.’s senior project: “Redesigning the Kirby-Bauer Protocol to Detect the Relative Concentration of Environmental Antibiotics”

“Across the world, antibiotic resistance is developing as an emerging public health emergency, threatening to upend the state of modern medicine.  One of the major breeding grounds of antibiotic resistance is the environment, as antibiotics begin to contaminate ecosystems nearby pollution sources such as livestock farms, dog parks, and waste facilities, leading to environmental antibiotic resistance that can be spread to pathogenic bacteria. Additionally, environmental antibiotic pollution can hinder plant growth and destroy local habitats. With this in mind, studies dealing with environmental antibiotic pollution are unfortunately still in their infancy.

Two main methodologies currently exist for these studies: direct measurement of environmental antibiotic concentration through liquid chromatography-mass spectroscopy or indirect measurement of antibiotic presence through testing environmental flora’s resistances in a disc diffusion test. Both are hindered by limitations in their scope of detection and their resource-, time-, and cost-intensive nature. As such, this research project attempts to determine whether direct testing of environmental water samples for antibiotic contamination can be done through a modified version of the Kirby-Bauer disc diffusion test. The standard agar depth and type of the Kirby-Bauer methodology will first be modified to test for the most sensitive combination of type and depth before testing it with antimicrobial-impregnated discs from stock solutions and, later, environmental water samples. If successful, this would create a more cost-effective and inclusive means of testing for antibiotic pollution, allowing for more widespread and informative studies that will help in combating the scourge of antibiotic resistance.”

Joshua B.’s senior project: “A LIDAR aided haptic vest for the visually impaired and special forces: The ARGUS vest”

“I am planning to create a working prototype of a LIDAR-aided haptic vest for the visually impaired and special services (i.e firefighters). VL53L1X sensors will be mounted on the outer sleeves, chest, and back to provide guidance in all directions. It is a similar concept to the backup sensor on modern cars, beeping faster as the car gets closer to an obstacle, instead, the beeping would be replaced with haptic motors that would let the user know in which direction an approaching obstacle is. The sensors in the jacket will all be connected to a Raspberry pi pico to process the distance data and set the haptic motors to the correct intensities. Planning, designing, and troubleshooting this product will help prepare me for engineering college and being an electrical/computer engineer. I will have to design circuit schematics, create PCBs, identify the right components to use, 3d model the enclosure for the mainboard, solder and assemble circuit boards, and code the microcontroller in C++.

For people with disabilities, it is often difficult to fit into society since people perceive you as different because of physical characteristics such as having a walking stick or a guide dog. This struggle to fit in creates psychological stress. My goal for creating this vest is for it to look like a normal piece of clothing, so the visually impaired won’t have to use a more noticeable seeing aid like a walking stick or guide dog. By being able to navigate their surroundings while wearing a plain vest, the visually impaired can function more easily.”

How can parents get involved?

We have a tremendously helpful MSA Booster Club.  The Boosters support all kinds of projects–from securing lab resources to supporting student enrichment and independent projects. The Boosters are also a great community-sounding board for parents looking to connect with folks who have lived the life of an MSA parent. The Boosters plan to host social events this year for parents to connect and idea share.

How can you join and support this group’s efforts?

1. You can become a member: Click Here!
2.  You can support their fundraisers:
   • Buy a T-Shirt: Click Here!
   • Holiday shop!  Use the MSABC’s Amazon Smile link to do some holiday shopping: Click Here!
   • Buy your groceries at a Kroger: Click Here!

Visit our open house to see if our program is a good fit for you!

If you are a current 8th or 9th grader, and you are interested in applying to our program, access the application to academy programs here. The deadline for applications is January 9, 2023.