STEM Students win 1st & 3rd Place in ADEC Challenge

Posted on May 22, 2017

Six teams of STEM Academy students and one team from Mishawaka High School competed in the final stage of the ADEC Penn Innovation Challenge yesterday (Tuesday, May 22) at ADEC Industries in Elkhart for the chance at winning a summer paid internship!

Penn Robotics and Engineering students were challenged to use their skills and knowledge to give back to the community. ADEC proudly advocates for and serves people with developmental and intellectual disabilities so they live lives full of choice and possibility. Along with a variety of services, ADEC also offers employment to its clients.

This unique challenge goes back to late April when 77 teams from both high schools presented their ideas and concepts. Teams were asked to focus on and find solutions to help ADEC client employees perform their jobs more efficiently, and thus hopefully increase their pay. ADEC asked the students to focus on these three core business areas to help their clients increase efficiency : Bake (Bow Wow Dog Biscuit production); Build (building sturdy furniture like benches or chests); or Balance (making custom wood signs with a CNC machine). ADEC then narrowed down the field to 10 finalists, one from Mishawaka and nine from Penn. 

Last week (May 15),  the Penn teams held their “build day” and devoted the entire school day to building their prototypes of tools. Six teams completed the task. On May 22,  all of the hard work over the last several weeks culminated for these remaining teams when the students presented their final projects to the ADEC panel of judges. 

Penn’s participants gave it their best as five of the teams chose the “Build” category to focus on. The other team focused on a simple solution to help workers count washers. Each team showcased their creative skills and ideas as the panel of judges intently listened and then asked questions of the participants. Click here for a more detailed description of all six Penn projects. 
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Judges deliberated for about half an hour while they made their decisions to award the top three teams. At the end of the day, P-H-M claimed first and third place, with Mishawaka taking second place.

First place winning team members are Ryan Doenges and Eddie Null. As first place winners, Ryan and Eddie will have an internship this summer at Sibley Machine, one of Penn’s Community Partners, who will host them and pay for their internship as they work on their project.

Penn ADEC Challenge

Third place Penn student team members: Jeff Pawlik, Caroline Tiebout, Collin Mott, Michael Feeley and Hayden Carnine.

Penn ADEC Challenge

Last Modified January 12, 2022