STEM Stories: When Racing Goes to School and Grows Up

By Bill Wood

It might be too dramatic to say motorsports are at a crossroads. But they are! The lifeblood of motor racing is corporate sponsorship and the B2B relationships those sponsorships create. Many manufacturers, however, are dropping the body styles used in racing events. So, what the sport looks like on the racetrack is in the midst of change. Fans who passionately made the automobile an integral part of their lives are older now and aren't sitting in the grandstands nor on the couch watching events. Their children often see the automobile as just a tool, a form of transportation and not a passion. Uber works just as well. Out of that cloudy future, however, comes STEM education. Motorsports are the perfect vehicle - pun intended! - to teach science, technology, engineering, and math to the next generation of potential motor racing fans. In short, it might be time for racing to get into a classroom and grow up! STEM Stories looks at how that might work. At the center of this collection of short stories are two people who've made education their passions. Leslie Hunter Chavous created STEM Racing, an educational program that's the basis of her doctoral program at The Ohio State University. Her partner in STEM Racing is Sam Williams, a former middle school principal who fed his passions for racing as a sportsman driver on weekends. Leslie and Sam take STEM Racing on the road and every week talk with a network of school children through video streaming technology. Along the way, dramatic people, places, and things insert themselves into the STEM Racing weekends. Leslie and Sam find it hard to overlook the crucible of culture surrounding their program. They do, however, find ways to overcome the obstacles. And those obstacles include everyday things like racism, sexism, cyber-attacks, drug abuse, child abuse, and dirty cops. Indeed, motorsports are at a crossroads, but STEM can be the GPS that will map a course going forward into new possibilities and purpose.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: B0D8WMPZCF
• ISBN13: 9798328494366
• Release Date: July 2024
• Publisher: Independently published
• Length: 272 Pages
• Dimensions: 9.0" x 0.6" x 6.0"