PUTNEY — When one thinks of The Putney School, images of cows and agriculture in a place where respect for the land is as natural as breathing might spring to mind.
Sports-minded people might think of The Putney School as being the cradle of Nordic skiing in America, thanks to John Caldwell and his progeny.
Others might think of the arts and other creative pursuits, as evidenced by the long list of writers, musicians, actors, and filmmakers who are alumni.
You might not think of science and technology as being part of The Putney School brand.
But it is, and the school is working to expose more students to the idea that a Putney School education can be a springboard to a career in science, technology, engineering, or math - STEM, for short.
As part of its summer educational programs, from July 17-22, The Putney School will host its first Applied Science and Design week for students in grades 7-11.
Inspired by the school's Project Week, when Putney students work collaboratively and independently on academic pursuits, students in the summer program will spend a week working on various projects.
Open to students of all experience levels, projects include solid modeling and 3-D printing, experimenting with programming Arduino computer processors, and using electro-mechanical assembly skills to build a simple robot.
Science, the Putney way
Glenn Littledale, The Putney School's lead instructor in physics and astronomy, will team up with research and development engineer Robert Chave and programmer Rory Cuerdon, who graduated in May with Putney's Class of 2016.
Chave is a 1968 graduate of The Putney School who went to MIT and Stanford after leaving Putney. For 15 years, he worked at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, contributing to projects such as the Mars Rovers and the Webb and Hubble space telescopes.
“Years ago, Putney School had an elite science program,” Chave said.
Both Chave and Littledale, a 1976 graduate of Putney, consider themselves disciples of longtime Putney School physics teacher Ed Shore, who led the science department. Chave believes the most important element of STEM education he learned at Putney is collaboration.
That collaboration now happens as much between Putney students and scientific folk worldwide as it does in person.
Gabe Lurz of Brattleboro, who just graduated from Putney and has a full scholarship to attend the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth this fall, is one example of such globe-spanning collaboration.
As part of his senior project at Putney, Lurz used a 3-D printer to create a nozzle for an airsoft gun and used it to shoot gold dust into cauliflower. It was a trial run for a bigger project - a collaboration with a Russian scientist to insert genetic material into plants.
Lurz, who plans to study molecular bioengineering at UMass-Dartmouth, has also been working on building an incubator for growing bacteria or, as he calls it, “a factory for making DNA.”
Using about $300 of off-the-shelf parts, Chave said that Lurz built an incubator that is the near-equivalent of the $25,000 machine in Chave's research lab.
Kindling a love of science
Lurz, a graduate of Hilltop Montessori School in Brattleboro, said he didn't start out thinking about science as his field of study.
“I enjoyed math, but I didn't excel in it,” he said. “Then I took a chemistry class [at Putney School] and caught on fast. I did a week's worth of homework in about 10 minutes. By my junior year, the teachers were coming to me asking for help teaching classes, and found I could do both roles.”
Chave, who lives in California, says he comes back to Putney twice a year and is excited by the work being done by Putney students in both the full-time and summer programs, especially in 3-D modeling and design.