MMA Counts Down To Sea Term And Launch Of Virtual Program
Massachusetts Maritime Academy is gearing up for Sea Term 2023, which is set to begin on January 8.
This year, nearly 20,000 students so far from around the world have registered for the academy’s Follow The Voyage-Share The Experience program, giving students in grades pre-Kindergarten through 12 a special look at the “one-of-a-kind STEM adventure on land and sea.”
The no-cost program will run from January 3 to February 19 and will allow registered participants to virtually travel aboard the TS Kennedy, a former commercial freighter and current training vessel of the US Maritime Service. The TS Kennedy is presently under the command of MMA alumnus Captain Michael Campbell, a member of the Class of 1987. This will be the final voyage of the TS Kennedy; a new training ship is scheduled to be delivered to the academy next winter.
Nancy Franks, coordinator of the program and K-12 outreach coordinator at MMA, said the program began 25 years ago and was initially aimed at middle school students. What began as a STEM initiative in 1997 with Hanson Middle School has grown exponentially in the years since, and since Ms. Franks took over the program in 2016, it has been expanded to welcome students in primary, secondary and high schools.
“The excitement surrounding the 2023 Follow The Voyage–Share the Experience Program is building at a rapid pace as we count down to January 3rd,” Ms. Franks said in a news release. “Over the years this one-of-a-kind virtual journey has allowed hundreds of thousands of students to experience the ultimate STEM adventure on land and sea.”
This year for the first time, classes from the Department of Defense schools and schools located on military bases are enrolled in the program, including schools on bases in Puerto Rico and Germany.
Students from the Department of Defense Education Activity (DoDEA) Virtual School from countries including Spain, England, Japan and Italy will be participating. Classes based in Morocco and Bahrain are enrolled, as is a homeschooling family from Canada. All this is in addition to the enrolled classes from more than half of the 50 states and three US territories, including homeschooling families from the Homeschooling Learning Community.
Students will be “onboard” the TS Kennedy, experiencing a unique repository of projects and activities to keep them engaged and learning while they remotely travel to Barbados, Aruba and St. Thomas alongside the MMA cadets. According to the academy’s news release, students and teachers alike will “feel as if they are right beside cadets as the TS Kennedy conducts anchoring drills off the coast of Mayaguez, Puerto Rico, and visits Bridgetown, Barbados; Oranjestad, Aruba; Charlotte Amalie, St. Thomas; and Fort Lauderdale [Florida].”
In the classroom, students will engage with a team of cadet bloggers who will share their day-to-day experiences and responsibilities aboard the TS Kennedy and engage with the students about what they are learning in their classes. Weather forecasting, celestial navigation, ocean currents, rust removal, engine maintenance, sewage treatment, firefighting and seawater desalination will be among the many topics discussed.
“The importance of offering STEM programs to students from an early age cannot be overstated,” Rear Admiral Francis X. McDonald, USMS, president of the Massachusetts Maritime Academy, said in a news release. “Our Follow The Voyage–Share The Experience Program offers a unique and engaging learning experience that participating students and their classroom teachers are certain to remember!”
In addition to academics, students are welcome to engage in a variety of other activities and outreach—including a soup can drive, art contests and history of the TS Kennedy—to honor the ship’s final year at sea.
Educators are invited to email ftv@maritme.edu by January 1 to register a class, grade level, troop, club or school for the Follow The Voyage–Share The Experience Program. Anyone else interested is encouraged to log onto the academy’s website after January 3 and follow the link to the program’s webpage.