Orange County (CA) Chapter, The Links, Incorporated Partnering with Raytheon Company Promoting STEM at Jefferson Leadership Academies (JLA)

Orange County (CA) Chapter, The Links, IncorporatedPartnering with Raytheon Company
Promoting STEM at Jefferson Leadership Academies (JLA)  Jefferson Leadership Academies (JLA), located in Long Beach, California, was pleased to welcome Orange County (CA) Chapter, The Links, Incorporated and Raytheon Company.  

The Links, Incorporated is an international, not-for-profit corporation, established in 1946. The membership consists of 12,000 professional women of color in 276 chapters located in 41 states, the District of Columbia and the Commonwealth of the Bahamas. It is one of the nation’s oldest and largest volunteer service organizations of extraordinary women who are committed to enriching, sustaining and ensuring the culture and economic survival of African Americans and other persons of African ancestry.
The Orange County (CA) Chapter, The Links, Incorporated, service communities within a 52 mile radius from Santa Ana, California.   The goal of their visit was to reach youth through a STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) “hands-on” activity of building rockets.  While the students were building the rockets, the engineers from Raytheon, were fostering an inquiry-based discussion about the structure, placement of wings, and stability of the rockets.   After building the rockets, the students were led to the “launch pad” for a “rocket launching”.   In addition to their classroom lesson, the group headed to the new STEM/Robotics Lab where they were introduced to the Jefferson Leadership Academics Robotics class of 2013-2014.  The students were able to interact with the engineers and pose some challenging questions to them about their robots.  The engineers from Raytheon were impressed with these budding engineers and have promised a return visit in the near future.  
Look out Long Beach, California, Jefferson Leadership Academies (JLA), Robotics is “STEM”ming UP!!!