S.A.M.E makes differences in community

Technology is consistently being implemented into day-to-day activities to improve life.

Students in the Engineering Design and Development class work on a Society of American Military Engineers (S.A.M.E.) project. The class is only open to seniors so that they can finish their high school years by completing a project with value in real life.

The project is sponsored by the Omaha S.A.M.E. post as a part of the Student Mentoring Program, which is designed to further student interest in architecture and engineering.

Both area middle schools and high schools compete.

Various area engineering, design, and architecture firms work alongside the students in the development and design of their respective ideas.

A past S.A.M.E. project was the Haddix Center engineering wing. Through 2002 to 2010, it was developed by students and built.

In 2010, Omaha North School Team 1 received the Omaha S.A.M.E. post’s Presidential Award of Honor for Project Omaha-Dagascar. The project “dealt with building rocket stoves, briquettes, and a grinder to be used in Madagascar,” according to the North archives.

There are four class periods of students participating in S.A.M.E. Their respective projects include theorizing a solution to clean water issues, sewer renovations, saving rainforests, to renovations of local and regional buildings, bridges, and landscapes.

In particular, the A3 classes’ project is hypothetically implementing a form of small scale transportation from Cuming to Ames Street. The students selected autonomous vehicles with a pod design as their travel mode of choice out of their initial brainstorm, which included a gondola and tram.

The pods would be powered electrically. Each would be spacious enough to allow for four to six people and two wheelchairs.

All the pods would be centrally connected and controlled on dedicated lines beside the street. The use of a rail system with various nodes would allow close access to various area amenities.

A goal of the project would be to draw people into North Omaha in an effort to revitalize the culture.

All the S.A.M.E. students will present their respective projects at the S.A.M.E. competition on March 26th.

Each team writes a twenty-page paper and presents to a panel of four judges for approximately twenty minutes. The winner of the overall competition gets $1,500 for their school and a $1,000 scholarship.

North has five overall wins and 60% of North teams win an award.

Future project ideas include a North football stadium, a fine arts wing addition for the school, and possible projects for the Henry Doorly Zoo.