On May 10, the Bishop Shanahan High School (BSHS) science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) team was named grand champion and won the overall Medical Category Award at the fifth annual Governor's STEM Competition held at the Dixon University Center in Harrisburg. The theme was "Improving Pennsylvania Through STEM."
The competition challenged STEM teams to develop communication, problem solving, critical thinking, and creativity skills to address the needs of Pennsylvanians. The official presentation team included seniors Michael Alec Gomba, Alana Pappas, David Carangan, Julia Hirs, and Brian Whiteford. Senior Carlo Ursal, the team's IT specialist, and freshman Brendan Pappas, one of next year's team leaders, also attended the competition. Faculty adviser Dr. John P. Janasik, who mentored the students in preparation for the competition, received the Faculty Adviser Award.
BSHS competed against 26 other high school teams representing each of their Intermediate Units from across the state. Each team qualified for the state-level event by winning regional competitions, with a total of 95 teams from all of the 27 Intermediate Units. These high schools included public, charter, private, and career and technical education centers in Pennsylvania.
Teams presented their findings and explained the practical applications of their device to a panel of judges. The BSHS winning device, the Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation Lifesaving Assistant (CRLA), was designed to improve the success rate of CPR. The CRLA portable device detects and monitors pressure and compression rates to assist administers of CPR, both trained and untrained. The Shanahan team's CRLA device also won first place at the Chester County Intermediate Unit's Innovative Inventions Competition and West Chester University's Business Idea Competition.
With the support of community partners and after extensive research and several prototypes, the BSHS team developed the project's final prototype, which was presented at the state competition. Communications Test Design Inc., a global engineering company based in West Chester, and Suzanne Vietri, a health educator and CPR certified instructor, assisted the team throughout the research and project development.
To learn more about the school, readers may visit http://www.shanahan.org.
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