Montgomery County Public Schools Foundation’s partnerships with local businesses and Montgomery College recently enabled students to participate in statewide competition, showcases and career fairs.
The educational foundation provides money to support special and innovative programs that are not funded by regular MCPS dollars.
During February and March, the Foundation partnered with Montgomery College and hosted a Cyber Forensics competition that culminated in a competition at the college’s Germantown campus.
More than 300 students from 23 high schools participated in virtual Capture the Flag competition. Questions encompassed five cyber-related topics.
In an in-person event MCPS High School Forensics challenge, students working groups of three tried to solve a mystery using cyber, deduction and organization skills to create a forensics report. 340 students from 13 high schools competed.
Montgomery Blair, Poolesville, Northwood, and Edison high school teams all placed in the competition.
On March 20, the Foundations Office/Construction Trades Foundation held a career fair for students at Seneca Valley and Edison high schools. More than 35 companies participated.
Many students were offered parttime, fulltime or summer employment.
In a third event, the Foundations Office/Information Technology Foundation in partnership with Johns Hopkins’ Applied Physics Lab held a an achievement showcase April 2. Students from clubs around the county shared their projects.
The projects focused on creating a wearable technology device to monitor an infant’s breathing rate, making an expandable lunar lander, designing and pitching a product to help solve a community program and creating a device to help clean the environment.
Winners are moving on to a state competition on May 4 in Laurel.
Groups from William Tyler Page Elementary School in Silver Spring are going to the state competition with their storybook and lunar lander challenges.
Groups from Hallie Mill Middle School in Clarksburg will represent MCPS in the community clean-up, national engineering design and wearable technology competitions. One group from Roberto Clemente Middle School in Germantown will compete in the lunar lander section.
Kennedy High School in Wheaton will compete in the community clean-up and wearable technology challenges. Einstein High School in Kensington will compete in the Lunar Lander challenge. Springbrook High School in Silver Spring will compete in the National Engineering Design challenge.
