[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 159 (2013), Part 5]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page 6677]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                 ACADEMIC COMPETITION RESOLUTION, 2013

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                            HON. BILL FOSTER

                              of illinois

                    in the house of representatives

                         Thursday, May 9, 2013

  Mr. FOSTER. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to welcome and congratulate 
students from the Oswego East High School Rocket Team and the Nequa 
Valley High School Rocket Team.
  The Oswego East and Nequa Valley Rocket Teams are coming to 
Washington, D.C. to compete in the Team America Rocketry Challenge 
National Fly-Off competition on May 11th. They qualified for the 
National Fly-Off by finishing in the top 100 out of 725 teams that 
competed nationwide to build a rocket that could carry a raw egg 750 
feet in the air, and then use a parachute to return the egg uncracked.
  These students have spent many hours designing, building, testing and 
launching model rockets in order to create the entries that qualified 
for the National Fly-Off. I am proud of their hard work, perseverance, 
and creativity, and I commend them on this achievement.
  I am also thrilled to see students embracing a project that involves 
elements of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. As a 
scientist and manufacturer, I know how rewarding it can be to research 
and explore, and to discover what you can accomplish when you design 
and build things from scratch.
  This country needs more young people who are excited about studying 
and working in the STEM fields. STEM graduates are critical to a 
thriving national economy, but at present, our education system is not 
producing nearly enough STEM graduates to meet the private sector's 
need for highly skilled employees. I'm pleased to see that there are 
contests like the Team America Rocketry Challenge that are encouraging 
students to explore STEM fields through fun, hands-on projects, and I'm 
proud of the students from my district who took on this challenge. I 
hope that this will be only the first of their accomplishments in the 
fields of science, technology, engineering and math.

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