eCYBERMISSION Michigan Outreach Visit

The last full week in January saw not only the last overnight eCYBERMISSION road show of the competition year, but also the final stop on our Research, Development and Engineering Command (RDECOM) subordinate tour. This marks the first year that eCYBERMISSION has visited all eight RDECOM subordinates and we are very grateful to all of our contacts at each of the subordinates who helped up set up our road shows and make this accomplishment possible.

The final RDECOM subordinate for 2009-2010 was the Tank Automotive Research, Development and Engineering Center (TARDEC) at the Detroit Arsenal in Warren, Mich.

While in Detroit the day before, I was privileged to received a private tour of the Detroit Beer Company; a free tour of the Motown Museum, where I got the opportunity to sing “My Girl” in the same studio where all the famous Motown recording artists worked; visited Rosa Parks’ tomb; and dined at Coach Insignia, a restaurant in the General Motors Headquarters with a breathtaking, panoramic view of Detroit and Windsor.

Of course, there was work to be done, too, and my day at TARDEC proved to be a very fruitful one. Overall, 14 new Volunteers and Virtual Judges registered and many more took information with them back to their offices with the intent of either signing up to be a Volunteer or Virtual Judge, pass the information on to an interested colleague or even take the information to their children’s schools in the hopes that the teachers would participate next year.

In addition to the road show itself, I also had the opportunity to present the information on the eCYBERMISSION program and competition to Michael Horn, the principal of Southfield High School, who was very interested in bringing eCYBERMISSION to his school in 2010-2011. We also met with Wendy May and Geri Neal, two Detroit Arsenal employees who have offered to have us return to Michigan in March to present the competition to representatives from school systems across the state.

All in all, between the 14 new Volunteers and Virtual Judges, our presentation and the new contacts made, our first trip to TARDEC was extremely successful. If you have the opportunity to visit Detroit, I would highly recommend it.

For more pictures from the eCYBERMISSION Michigan road show, please visit our Flickr page.