Jeff Gerhardt - Program Development Activities

Program Development Activities

Gerhardt began developing a series of STEM programs (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) in 2003 called Focus On NASA,(or FON). These programs had at their root several youth programs that Gerhardt was involved with as partnerships with the Chicago Public School System. The FON programs are an out-growth of those two Program Tracks in which Gerhardt had been involved.

One Program Track was a program called Senior Seminars. This was a mentoring program at Devry University, that was a Capstone project where Seniors at Devry would participate in real world projects. Gerhardt felt that this program would benefit high school youth.

The other program track was called College Excel and was a series of programs where high school youth could earn college credits.or

Gerhardt and these programs were recognized in 2006 by the BP Education Foundation (formerly Leader Foundation) with one of the five LEADER Awards for 2006. The Focus On NASA programs have gone on to win support or funding from a number of organizations including: After School Matters, the Chicago Public School system, Motorola and the Motorola Foundation, Chicago Mayor Richard M Daley & the Village of Wonder Lake. Gerhardt has presently designed over 9 STEM programs from storm chasing to rocketry to the FIRST Robotics Competition robotics team TEAM CHALLENGER.

The results of these programs speak for themselves.

The UGLC or Underground Gamers league of Chicago, is a youth drop-in center program that has given a group of youth in Chicago the opportunity to relate to like-minded "geek kids" in a safe space. The motto of "gaming superiority through mastery of technology" has taken a group of over 100 youth in Chicago and allowed them to reconnect to the education process in a way that makes sense in their life view.

The B2B or Birds to Bots space science program boasts 10 of its 16 2007 graduating seniors as having been accepted to major college engineering programs.

The Flagship program TEAM CHALLENGER, a robotics engineering program for high school age youth, qualified and competed for the International Championships of the US FIRST FIRST Robotics Competition. In its first year of competition TEAM CHALLENGER won the Xerox Creative Engineering Award for the design and creation of their robot MOTOLOLA, the Rookie All-star Award at the Midwest FRC Regional and was ranked 15th of over 2000 teams.

The team was given a special award by the City Council of Chicago and Mayor Daley for representing Chicago in such a stellar fashion during the 2006/2007 FRC season.