On Oct. 23, all of the sophomore Governor’s STEM Academy students traveled to farms around Dayton in order to collect soil samples for their rhizobium project. After the visit to the first two farms, owned by Lamar Rhodes, the bus took the science and math pathway group back to the school. The technology and engineering students were then taken to a few more farms to collect more samples. For each sample, GPS coordinates, landscape and temperature were required in order to achieve accurate data. The goal of the trip was to collaborate with JMU in research.

“It’s a really neat collaboration between JMU and Harrisonburg High School,” STEM Academy co-director Myron Blosser said. “JMU has expertise and equipment that we don’t have here at the high school.”

The research benefits both the high school and JMU and creates a win-win situation, according to Bosser. The research gives the students a chance for exposure and the colleges put the research in their databases.

“It benefits the high school greatly because the students are able to do college level research,” Blosser said.

Two days before the trip, the program put a piece of technology together of their own making. Leonard jars, a dark beer bottle with its bottom cut off and placed top down inside a mason jar, will be used to examine the nodules that grow on the soybeans the class plants. The only technology necessary to create this was made by Blosser. The contraption held the beer bottle in place while a sharp implement scored the bottle. After, it was placed in hot water, and then it was quickly placed in cold which caused the bottom to pop off.

According to technology and engineering pathway student Sarah Benasher, the trip was beneficial to the class’s education

“Some of the stuff that the farmers were saying was really helpful with learning about what we’re doing in STEM,” Benasher said.