By Sam Beckler and Brennan Heims

A robot in the making.

Jason Messick started his engineering career building custom motorcycles at a shop in Washington, DC. He then moved on to build custom furniture in Illinois before moving back to Virginia. Once in Virginia, He was asked to fill in for the woodshop teacher at St. Christopher’s School. Messick then took up a job teaching Middle School math at Collegiate in place of another teacher on maternity leave. 

An 8th Grade engineering mask.

It was at Collegiate that Messick met STEAM coordinator and robotics teacher Dan Bartels and connected with him over their shared interest in punk rock music and engineering. Bartels took particular interest in Messick’s engineering background and asked if he would like to be a part of the engineering and robotics program at Collegiate.

Today, Messick teaches 8th Grade engineering, Upper School engineering and robotics, and is part of the Robotics Team. The 8th Grade engineering class focuses more on teaching the fundamentals of engineering, while the Upper School engineering and robotics class allows students to choose what they would like to work on.

His 8th Grade class is currently working on creating masks to guide a person through an obstacle course. The masks block all vision but have red and blue lights implanted in front of the eyes to allow another person with a controller to guide the person with the mask through a course. The controller has a button for red lights, which indicate a left turn, and a button for blue lights, indicating a right turn.

The Upper School engineering and robotics class has students creating their own projects. Projects include building a wind tunnel and designing and creating surfboards. The students creating the surfboards first designed the boards on a computer and used that plan to create the surfboards out of real material. 

When interviewed for The Match on Wed., Oct. 25, Messick was working on fixing the milling machine to allow students to use it for projects in the future. He was also working on fixing the robot for the Robotics Team’s first competition that upcoming Saturday.

All photos by Sam Beckler.