Marquette Catholic competes in World Wide Technology competition

ST. LOUIS - The Engineering team at Marquette Catholic High School competed in a “ Hackathon” at World Wide Technology in St. Louis last week.  The Hackathon is a competition to inspire students to use technology to solve a current problem for their school or community. The Marquette Team and their invention placed third out of the 11 teams entered.

This is only the second year that World Wide Technology sponsored the Hackathon and the competition was tough says team member Danielle Folkerts. 

“We watched the other teams present their ideas and they were all really good. Ours was a little unique," she said. “Many schools presented new apps and websites but we presented hardware that was very different than the other schools,“ added teammate Claire Chappee. 

MICDS, DeSmet, Trinity, Metro A&C, CBC, Ursuline Academy, Kirkwood, Jennings, SLUH, Pattonville high schools also competed in this event.

Ten Seniors made up Marquette’s team for the Hackathon: Rachel Grimaud, Konnor Morrissey, Faith Griffon, Marshall Youngblood, Ketoura Ngwa, Danielle Folkerts, Ryan Wickenhauser,  Stephen St. John, Claire Chappee and Joe Kuebrich.  Mrs. Michele Sands is the coordinator of the group and teaches the Intro to Engineering Class at Marquette.

Marquette’s team presented a Safety  & Security System that allows the administration to know the current location of students.  A RFID reader is placed in the doorways of each room including the restrooms and a special student ID is given to each student.  The RFID reader scans the ID as a student enters the room and each student is accounted for.

If there is a crisis or lock down in the school, the engineering team designed a system of lights that tells the students if it is safe to flee the area or if they are to stay put where they are.

World Wide Technology provided each team $500 to purchase supplies to create their project.  The winning team received $10,000, second place received $5,000 and Marquette won $2,500 for third place. These awards are to be used for technology.

Next up for the Marquette Engineering Team is the Boeing Glider Challenge.

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