By ANGELO ARMBRISTER

Freeport News Reporter

angelo@nasguard.com

Catholic High did it again, holding on to the senior championship at the 11th an-nual Science Engineering Communication Math Edu-cation (SECME) mousetrap car and rocket launch competitions.

Unlike past years, Catholic High did not dominate the competition which was held at St. Georges High School yesterday among elementary and high schools from across the island.

The defending champs took first place in the senior division of the mousetrap car competition, beating out Bishop Michael Eldon and St. Georges High, who came second and third respectively.

In the Junior division, St. Paul's Methodist College took the top spot, while Tabernacle Baptist Academy came in second and St. Georges rounded out the top three.

Meanwhile, Tabernacle was also the sole winners of the primary portion of the mousetrap car competition.

According to Herbert Marshall, senior science officer for the Ministry of Education and one of the competition's directors, the winning junior and senior teams in the mousetrap car contest will represent the island in the international competition sponsored by the SECME program. That event will be held this June in Florida.

In the Rocket competition, which was added for the first time last year, the contest was fierce.

Sunland Baptist Academy took it in the senior segment edging out Tabernacle for first place. Catholic High rounded off the top three in that division.

St. Paul's College secured the top position among the junior teams. While St. Georges came in a close second and Catholic High brought up the rear in third place.

Kamal Dames, a twelfth grader at Grand Bahama Catholic High said this is his sixth year participating in the SECME program.

"Every year we come together and try to build a car that we know will win. I've also been a part of the international competitions and we always try to pick up new things from the cars over there to see how we could make our car better," he said.

"Its been a really great experience and I really enjoy it."

Dr. Milton Robinson, consultant to the President of Kettering University, who was instrumental in introducing the program to Grand Bahama said that the purpose of this competition is to have students receive a hands-on approach to engineering.

"They are engaging in building mousetrap cars and rockets and we will determine how high the rockets go and how far the mousetrap cars travel," he said, noting that the important "thing is that they participate and... so they all leave a winner."

"The second thing is that they learn physics and mathematics. They learn how to apply the laws of physics, they learn more about gravity, force and they go on to become better scientists and technicians here in The Bahamas."

Speaking to other benefits of the program, Robinson said that students can also win engineering scholarships. He added that the SECME scholarship program or the AIM program is handled in conjunction with Rotary.

"We select two students from here to participate in the AIM Program, which is a five week program where the students learn more about what it takes to become an engineer," he said.

The top 15 of the 40 students participating, he ex-plained, earn themselves scholarships to attend Ketter-ing University.

"To-date we've had more than a dozen young people from here that have gone on, received scholarships, graduated and become engineers," he said adding that some of them are employed at Vopak, Pharmachem, the Freeport Container Port and the Grand Bahama Port Authority.

Rotarian Dennis Knowles, explained that the AIM Program is an engineering scholarship program that has been in existence for the last 11 years.

"We've put about 30 Bahamian kids through engineering college," he said.

Students, he said must meet a set of criteria based on academic standards in order to qualify for the program.

"It also has to do with maturity, personality and a number of other issues. I personally along with Dr. Robinson conduct the interviews, which last anywhere from 30 minutes to one hour," he said.

SECME, Knowles explain-ed, has been a tremendous program which has received the full support of the Ministry of Education and the local schools.

According to Knowles, it has served as a catalyst to the AIM program.

"This is the one that generates the interest in the sciences and learning more and getting their grades up to the level where they need to be in order be competitive," he said.

Former winners of a SECME scholarship to attend college include Barrack Stubbs of St. Georges High; Sherrelle Duncombe of Catholic High; Gadryn Higgs also of Catholic High;Todd Wilson of Bishop Michael Eldon High; and Travis Bethel out of Nassau.