What do you get when you combine a mousetrap, a couple of used CDs, some wire and a few other odds and ends?

If you’re a trio of top science students at Kanapaha Middle School, you get a summertime trip to Alabama.

Seventh-graders Daniel Monaghan, Chloi Logan and Joshua Mintz are headed to the annual SECME National Student Competition in Tuskeegee, Alabama in late June. SECME is a national organization that encourages students, particularly girls and other underrepresented minorities, to study and pursue careers in science and engineering.

“I think girls do need to step up and show that they can be every good as the guys,” said Logan. “There’s this stereotype that girls can’t do science or math or engineering, but it’s just not true.

Logan and her teammates earned their trip to the Engineering Design National Finals by designing and building the best middle school mousetrap car in the regional competition at the University of Florida. Their car had to be the lightest, smallest and travel the longest distance. They also had to produce the top technical report and drawing and explain to the judges how their car worked. Those additional categories meant the students must be effective communicators and work well with each other.

“Engineers are not work-alone islands,” said Kanapaha’s technology teacher and SECME coach Karen Mittner. “They have to be able to work in teams, and that’s what SECME does—it builds partnerships.”

“You’ve got to talk and work with other people,” said Mintz. “You can’t do it all by yourself.”

The preparation for the competition began back in September, when the school’s SECME club began meeting weekly after school for projects that included designing and building spaghetti towers and bottle rockets.

“It’s really fun,” said Monaghan. “It gives you a lot of opportunities to design things. I like to think of the ideas and test them out.”

“It’s important for students to have a place to come to after school to do challenging things,” said Mittner. “The things we do are fun, but they also relate to the academics they do during the day at school.”

Thanks to the support of the University of Florida, the SECME students also have several opportunities to see engineers and other scientists at work in a real-world setting.

“These kids have a chance to be introduced to careers that they might not have known existed,” said Mittner. “They start thinking that maybe they would like to go to college and pick an engineering or science field to go into.”