Mr. Archer and Mrs. Morton are partnering with the University of Alabama in Huntsville’s (UAH) Center for Cybersecurity Research and Education (CCRE) and the newly formed Department of Education, Training, and Outreach (DETO) to receive mentoring and support in Artificial Intelligence (AI) – especially regarding coaching teams for the Presidential AI Challenge and continuing to support and expand on the student teams’ project ideas and to help New Century’s Computer Science Strand students engage with AI in many different ways.
This federally funded grant specifically named Mr. Archer and Mrs. Morton as 2 of the 3 teachers selected to participate in this initiative. Ms. Lee Ann Pessoney from DETO visited Computer Science Strand classes over several weeks to help fast-track student teams to provide detailed, in-depth AI Narratives and Digital Posters as part of the 2025 Presidential AI Challenge: High School Track I submission track to represent North Alabama, the Tennessee Valley, and the Huntsville Metro area.
New Century’s teams worked to create their own research-based ideas to help guide our modern world into the future by working together to create well-thought-out 500+ word narratives plus their visualization poster to help supplement the narratives. After creating their Rough Draft and Final Draft versions, teams then had to present to an audience of their peers while receiving critiques and direct feedback to implement into their Final Draft Submission. The overall process allowed student teams to go through the brainstorming, drafting, and final presentation process to get them used to presenting fact-based research in front of others in a professional format.
Ms. Pessoney and UAH’s DETO will continue to work with Mr. Archer, Mrs. Morton, and the Computer Science Strand Department to bring more hands-on activities, resources, and industry professionals to help guide the Computer Science students at New Century in the cutting-edge field of Artificial Intelligence for the foreseeable future as we move into a world that merges AI and machine learning technologies in many different ways.