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Navy helps students More than 200 fifth-graders in the Pearl Harbor area next month will get the chance to experience that math and science can be fun and relevant. That's what more than 25,000 mainland students have learned during the past eight years with the help of the Navy.
learn math, science
The Starbase program benefits
fifth-graders around Pearl HarborBy Gregg K. Kakesako
gkakesako@starbulletin.comThe elementary school science and mathematics enrichment program was brought into the Navy nearly a decade ago by Kamehameha Schools trustee Richard Kihune when he was a three-star admiral in charge of Navy training.
Kihune said he believes the value of the program is its ability to capture the attention of students at a young age "so they will continue this interest" in science and math throughout their school years.
Established in the fall of 1994 at Pensacola Naval Air Station and Whiting Field Naval Air Station in northwest Florida, the educational program, called Starbase Atlantis, is designed to help elementary students not only in the field of science, but also to influence their attitudes and behavior before they get into middle school, said Crystal Trujillo, director of the Navy program based at Ford Island.
"This is the area and time when we hope to make the biggest impact," said Trujillo, who has been an educator for the past 15 years.
She said the program is designed to help the students "develop positive self-esteem, focus on setting and achieving personal goals, and develop a drug-free lifestyle."
Cmdr. Jay Woolston, executive officer of the Naval Submarine Training Center on Ford Island, said his command's involvement in Starbase Atlantis reflects "its support of the community here."
The sailors at the submarine training center will help to provide role models for the elementary school students as they try to teach them how various scientific principles are translated from the textbook to the real world. "We are providing a very needed addition to the school system," Woolston said. "At the same time, the students will be interfacing with my sailors to see how these principles are applied in the Navy world."
Fifth-grade students from seven elementary schools in the Pearl Harbor area will attend classes at Ford Island's submarine training center one day a week over a five-week period, Trujillo said.
Teachers will be given supplementary materials designed not only to sustain interest from one week to another, but also "to help augment what they may be learning in the classroom," she said.
The core Starbase Atlantis curriculum includes astronomy, model rocketry and the physics of flight.
At Ford Island the students also will be exposed to the skills related to submarine operations, Woolston said. These range from scuba diving to firefighting and damage control techniques as well as spending time in the training center's diving simulation, which replicates the conditions in a submarine's control room with the students actually given the chance to "to drive a submarine," Woolston said.
He also is working on other educational classes centered around the diesel operations and air-conditioning training Pearl Harbor sailors now undergo as ways to put a practical face on physics and mathematics.
"The idea is to supplement their core courses," Woolston said. "I think the students will be entertained, motivated and drawn into the pursuit of education. At the same time, the experience will help our sailors get more involved in the community."
The program will begin next month with fifth-graders from Hickam and Pearl Harbor Kai Elementary Schools. They will later be joined from students from the elementary schools from Aliamanu, Pearl Harbor, Makalapa, Mokulele and Nimitz.
Trujillo hopes to expand the program during the summers to include students from other Navy families as well as those civilians working for the Department of Defense. The goal is to try to offer the program to at least 1,000 fifth-grade students in the Pearl Harbor area.
The $8 million Navy program has spread to Norfolk, Va.; San Diego; Bangor, Wash.; and Gulfport, Miss.
The initial Starbase Atlantis program began in 1991 when Barbara Koscak, a Michigan elementary school teacher, formed a partnership with a Air National Guard brigadier general and F-16 pilot to establish an aerospace program for elementary school students.
It was called Stars and was a one-week summer program. Through a five-year Kellogg Foundation grant, Stars was expanded to a year-round program offered to fourth- through sixth-graders. In 1993, Congress approved funds for additional Starbase academies at National Guard installations in several states. Since then, every military service, except the Army, has a version of the Starbase program.
In January 1994, Kihune, then a vice admiral and chief of naval education and training, visited Michigan's Starbase operations and was so impressed that he wanted it for the Navy. Kihune said that growing up in Papakolea and Waianae, he knew that it would be hard to change the attitudes of older students.
"At the time, I had also been working with kids at risk, trying to help them get their high school diplomas after they had dropped out of school," Kihune said. "So I knew how hard it was to change their attitudes. Trying to motivate them was the biggest challenge."
The value of the Michigan program was that "without realizing it, these young kids were actually studying and learning something." Kihune said he realized the Navy had both the manpower and technical resources to make such a educational venture work. "When you watch these kids behind a flight simulator at Pensacola, you can see their enthusiasm, and without knowing it they are applying mathematical principles in a practical way."
By June 1994, funds had been secured and classes began in September at Pensacola, followed several months later with classes at Whiting Field.
Pat Church, who now runs the Starbase Atlantis program in San Diego, was recruited eight years ago as its first program director in Florida. "The response has been phenomenal," said Church.
In San Diego, "school districts are literally fighting to get into the program. It has been such a desired program, but with only one classroom we can only serve eight to 10 schools a year."
She said the program has earned numerous awards, including one in 1997 at the President's Summit for America's Future as an example of using volunteers as teachers.