In years past, becoming a teenager in the Cayman Islands meant one thing to a young male: he would go to sea. Today, time away at sea for male teenagers is most likely a short jaunt to Rum Point across the North Sound.
The success of last year’s Mi Academy Naval Architecture and Marine Engineering camp, which is an initiative of Dart’s Minds Inspired programme, shows that young males — and some females — are still interested in connecting to the sea in meaningful ways.
The late Dr. Bill Hrudey would have been proud to see Cayman’s first astronomy conference being held in his name next week.
Ken Dart’s strong belief in the power of education was influenced by his family who long believed in the transformative power of education - both for the individual and for society in general. Dart translated this belief in the power of education into exciting programmes, initiatives and work experience – Minds Inspired; and Cayman’s pre-eminent local scholarship programme, Dart Scholar.
STEM — science, technology, engineering and mathematics. These subjects are interwoven in everything today's students do and learn — and more importantly, they have a role to play in every industry and every career: from art — the impact of arts learning on the ability of the brain to remember, for example — to health, and the ability of an app to interpret data and determine whether breast tissue samples are benign or malignant.
The John Gray Aqua Lasers Too and Layman E. Scott Brac Bots are representing the Cayman Islands at the International SeaPerch underwater robotics challenge in North Dartmouth, Massachusetts, U.S., this June.
Six years after launching the first Minds Inspired scholarship, Glenda McTaggart now manages a programme that includes 19 scholars, work experience for 40 summer students and a busy calendar of events based on science, technology, engineering and mathematics, or STEM.