Sept. 18—GOSHEN — Fairfield science students won the national fishing lure competition for the second year in a row thanks to an integrated collaboration with faculty members.

Every year, Fairfield Jr.-Sr. High School biology teacher Amy Charlwood and Fairfield Jr.-Sr. High School engineering and design teachers Jim Jones and Denis Schooley gather their children at the beginning of the school year to begin a project that lasts throughout the course.

The National High School Fishing Lure Design Contest is a competition that Fairfield Jr.-Sr. High School students have entered annually for the past eight years. Students spend most of the year preparing their designs for the competition.

“Integrated STEM with biology and engineering, most schools don’t have that, so teachers are in their own little box,” Jones said. “Here, because we’re all three of us working together, we’re promoting the idea of ​​STEM and things working together, just like in real life. If you go to a manufacturing plant in Elkhart County, they don’t just put one department here and one department here. They’re all working together, and that’s what we’re trying to show students, by combining engineering and biology.”

It is part of the TRAILS (Teachers and Researchers Advancing Integrated Lessons in STEM) program at Purdue University, which aims to connect high school teachers learning about biological sciences, biology, agriculture, engineering, and technology through integrated STEM professional development experiences.

Throughout the year, biology students research and design the perfect insect-based bait to attract local fish.

Students must use 3D printing design to create castable fishing lures. They must use biomimetic design, natural action, be naturally sized and designed to target specific fish. The top three teams in two categories, hard and soft, receive gift cards as prizes. Jones said one of the largest lures the district entered into the Purdue competition this year was just half an inch long.

“He shows them real-life applications,” Charlwood said. “We don’t just study bugs to study bugs. We study bugs to design a product. … My kids are like research. They develop it together. His would be production. My kids do the packaging, and we do the sales, but even when it comes to packaging, his kids have to approve it because they’re all working as a team.”

Throughout the year, biology students research and design the perfect insect-based bait to cast for local fish. Charlwood’s class collects insects from the river, identifies them and works out which ones will make good baits.

“They need to learn about the insects, how they move and wriggle,” which fish will be attracted to them, Charlwood said.

They then sketch them out and send the designs to engineering students, who use CAD to make a mold into which the soft filler is poured. They choose the colors and whether they have glitter or not, depending on the environment in which the individual might catch certain species.

“Another part of the project over the last three years has been ‘local,’” Jones said. “The fishing baits in Maryland were completely different than the ones in Colorado, depending on the habitat, what the fish were eating, what the water was like. When we went to Hawaii in June, there wasn’t a lot of freshwater fishing, so they had to modify and focus more on saltwater.”

Jones said one of the interesting things about the competition is that because there is such a small market for insect baits, students cannot easily replicate commonly available baits.

The top three lure designs are then submitted to the Purdue Bass Club for judging in the Purdue TRAILS Fishing Lure Design Contest. This is the second year in a row that Fairfield teams have taken first, second and third place in the soft lure design competition at the national research design competition.

Charlwood said the hardest part of the project is finding time in the curriculum to do the necessary work. She’ll start looking for bugs in the next few weeks. Classes spend several days a week working on the collaborative project.

Dani Messick is an education and entertainment reporter for The Goshen News. She can be reached at [email protected] or 574-538-2065.