Transcription of Keith Borkowski for the show Engaging in Education #256
Dr. Lisa: Our guests are interesting and that they are not teachers but that they work closely with the school systems in the areas of First LEGO Robotics and also, Odyssey of the Mind. Jim Eickmann is the engineering manager at the Corning Incorporated Life Sciences Plant in Kennebunk. He started working for Corning in 1999 after earning his BA in Physics and PhD in Optical Sciences. Since moving to Maine in 2009, Jim has been involved with science and technology in the community. In particular, he has enjoyed the opportunity to both increase interest among middle school students in STEM or Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math, and help build their schools through programs such as First LEGO Robotics. Jim and his wife live with their two sons in Kennebunk. Thanks for coming in today.
Jim: Thank you.
Dr. Lisa: We also have with us Keith Borkowski who is the plant controller at the Corning Incorporated Life Science Plant in Kennebunk. He joined Corning in 2012. Keith has been involved with Odyssey of the Mind for nine years in the town of Wells. His Odyssey of the Mind involvement started as a parent. He’s been coaching for the past seven years and the coordinator at the elementary school for the past five. To Keith, Odyssey of the Mind is a great way for kids to learn and display their STEAM skills or Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Math skills. Keith and his wife, Margaret, live with their two daughters in Wells. Thank you for coming in.
Keith: Thank you.
Dr. Lisa: One of you is interesting in STEM and one in STEAM. I’m just fascinated. Are we now calling all things STEM STEAM or is there still a divergence of thought?
Jim: I think it’s more of an evolution from STEM to STEAM. It started as STEM and there was a lot of interest in the math and the sciences. Then, as people got interested in programs like robotics and Odyssey of the Mind, they saw that there was this creative element to things as well, not just the technical side of things. That’s where the A got added in. You do hear STEAM coming in a lot more now. You still hear STEM but STEAM coming in a lot more now too.
Dr. Lisa: What I wonder is, what’s left out? If you now have STEAM, is it just reading, and language arts, or history, or literal arts? Maybe this isn’t even a question that you guys can answer. I don’t know.
Keith: Yeah, STEM actually does cover those topics also because you need to be able to read the problems, understand them, and be able to take that and put it into your solution.
Dr. Lisa: I won’t ask you to understand the educational mind because I know that’s not exactly what you do. You both actually work for Corning Incorporated Life Sciences. Explain to me what that is.
Jim: We’re a division of Corning Incorporated. Our division is focused on making products that help the life sciences, or medical, or pharmaceutical industries. A lot of our products are used at universities to do research. They’re also used to produce a lot of things like vaccines and medicines. While we don’t make those types of vaccines or medicines, we make products that help companies make them.
Dr. Lisa: Keith, what is plant controller do.
Keith: I’m the one responsible for the financial reporting of the plant. Also, making sure that we follow all the legal aspects of finance and accounting.
Dr. Lisa: I’m interested, Jim, because you pointed out that it’s not a BS or a Bachelor of Science in Physics. You actually have a bachelor of arts. Is that unusual?
Jim: Yes. Most physics undergraduate degrees are a science degree. I attended a liberal arts college and there’s a lot of emphasis on not just your major but making sure that you got a broad exposure to a lot of different areas, science, arts, humanity. They weren’t calling it STEAM back them but it’s more of a STEAM-type of approach.
Dr. Lisa: What does it mean to have a PhD in Optical Sciences?
Jim: That was furthering my education trying to narrow down and focus. After having this broad exposure, I was really interested in how I can apply it. That’s where I looked to get a further degree. Optics was just an area that was very interesting to me. That’s what I pursued.
Dr. Lisa: Keith, as the plant control of what type of educational background do you have?
Keith: I have a BS in Accounting and I’ve also passed the CPA exam.
Dr. Lisa: It’s interesting, you guys cover all the different fields. We’ve got finances, and business, and we’ve got BA of the Liberal Arts. It’s seems like Corning is really meaning to bring in a lot of different pieces to do the work that they do.
Jim: There is a lot of-cross functional efforts. Keith and I, even though I’m in engineering and he’s in finance, we work quite a bit together both collaboratively and trying to help each other understand what’s going on in the different functions in our plant.
Dr. Lisa: I guess, the reason I’m so interested in this is because we talked a lot about STEM and STEAM. Eventually, kids get out of the educational system and they get jobs. I’m wondering how each of you got to the place where you now are employed and essentially a science-related field.
Jim: For me, I was always interested in science or the way things work from getting on a microscope when I was little to just reading books about how things work, and things like that. I knew I wanted to somehow end up in sciences. After getting my PhD, I knew I wanted to be in applied science or engineering. Corning was a great fit for that career interest for me.
Dr. Lisa: Keith, how about you? Was there something about working within the scientific field even though what you do is financial?
Keith: Yeah, for the life sciences industry, it’s really interesting to me to see what the products can do now, and all the changes, and evolution that’s going on in the industry. Currently, my daughter is at Brown University. She’s getting firsthand knowledge of all the changes. She’s right at that forefront of what’s going on. It was great for me to get into the life sciences industry to see what was going into the industry at this point in time.
Dr. Lisa: Both of you are doing things that I think are somewhat new to the educational scene, at least, in Maine. I believe Odyssey of the Mind has been around longer than the first LEGO Robotics Program but this type of in the school’s effort to encourage kids to do things with science, technology, arts, engineering, and math, this is somewhat new within the last few decades, I would say. Why do we care? Why do we want to get kids doing things that are not just classroom-oriented to help get them interested?
Jim: I think there’s several reasons. One is I think, as you said, they need to be prepared for a job or for a career. There is a great need for those STEM skills in the industry. We’re always looking for engineers now, and there’s a lot of talk around just the scarceness of engineering resources in the US, in general. I think schools recognize that they needed to help prepare and fill that void. The programs like the Robotics or Odyssey of the Mind really help develop those at practical skills outside of just the classroom teaching.
Dr. Lisa: Keith, tell me about Odyssey of the Mind. What does that actually involve?
Keith: Odyssey of the Mind is a creative program where the kids are responsible for the understanding the problems that they will solve and coming up with their own solutions 100%. There’s no interaction with the parents. We can teach them skills like how to saw, or how to use a drill, but they have to come up with all of the aspect themselves. They actually have to take the problem. There’s five different types of problems. They’ll take one problem and that will be what they’ll work on for the full year. That’s a long-term problem. This year, my team is working on the vehicle problem. They have to build a vehicle that can hold two kids, be propelled without cycling, no pedaling by human, and travel a course, and pick up several different items to be adapted.
What’s great for me is that it starts with the kids have to do it all themselves. I also coach soccer. At that point in time, you’re telling the kids what to do. In this, the kids have to actually go out and do the program themselves.
Dr. Lisa: How about you, what about the First LEGO Robotics Program?
Jim: First, it has very similar core values to Odyssey of the Mind in the respect that the kids should be doing the work. They come up with the solutions for the problems. The coaches are there to help or teach basic skills but it’s really relying on the kids to define the problem and come up with some creative solution to it. In the case of, first, the problem is a little bit more defined in terms of there’s one problem of robotic competition or a robotic challenge that all of the teams work on, the same problem. The creativity, the variety of solutions is pretty amazing when you see how one team solves it compared to another team, but it’s always the kids working to come and figure out how to solve the problem.
Dr. Lisa: Heidi Kirn is our Art Director for Maine Home Design. From what I understand you brought her daughter along with an entire team of kids to St. Louis because, for the second time, your team was the state champions in the First LEGO Robotics Competition. That’s big deal there.
Jim: Yeah, it was. It was a very big deal and a very exciting trip. We had ten kids that this was their second year together on a team which is also unusual and their second year winning the state championship which I think is unusual too. The trip was to the World Festival in St. Louis. The first organization which does First LEGO Robotics and a couple of other programs for high school and elementary students has this World Festival each year. It’s the largest convention in St. Louis, 40,000 people, and close to 1000 different teams of kids there. The kids had a great time and it was very exciting to get to see all the other teams from 40 different countries around the world.
Dr. Lisa: These kids that you brought were seventh and eighth grade.
Jim: Yes. Yeah. The age group for LEGO Robotics run from eight to fourteen. This was there last year of eligibility. They’re all in thirteen to fourteen years.
Dr. Lisa: How about Odyssey of the Mind, what’s the age breakdown on that?
Keith: The bracket that we’re in this year is division two, and it’s sixth to eighth graders. The seven kids in my team are all in sixth grade. As a first year division two team, they ended up winning the state title.
Dr. Lisa: Is there some a national festival or competition that you are going to as well?
Keith: Yes. We’ll be going out May 24th through the 29th to Iowa State University. We’ll be competing in the World Finals. There would be approximately 820 teams from, I believe it’s 25 different countries will be out there. We’ll be competing against teams like Poland, and China, Mexico.
Dr. Lisa: Why is it that the Kennebunk-Wells areas seems to be doing so well in these competitions for the state?
Jim: I know in Kennebunk, I think, what I’ve seen over the last five years is really a rapid increase in interest in the First LEGO Program. I think that interest, by not just the students but the parents and the rest of the community to support it because it does take a lot of work to do these programs, really has helped with the success. The first year, five years ago that I did the program, I believe they were out 20 or 25 kids in the district that were in the program. This past year, there were over a hundred. It’s really grown dramatically. It takes a lot of support to do that and the community as well have gotten behind it, as well as the school district.
Dr. Lisa: How about Wells?
Keith: Wells has had a long tradition with the Odyssey of the Mind including a couple of the board members for Odyssey of the Mind actually still resides in Wells and did the program with their kids, I don’t want to date them, but 20 or 30 years ago. We had some fairly good success and it was over the last 10 years.
Dr. Lisa: I think when I was growing up, science wasn’t as, I’ll use the word sexy. Let’s just put that out there. It wasn’t as appealing that we didn’t have as many kids. We had a math team, we had literary magazine, but that wasn’t the same as what I’ve interest science and technology. Why has that changed?
Keith: I know one reason is the technology itself makes it more accessible. The LEGO Robotics kids for example are completely different from any LEGOs I ever played with growing up. Technology that’s a part of those is pretty amazing. To make it accessible and usable by students that are eight to fourteen year olds, without that, it would be hard to get them as interested.
Jim: I believe a lot of the careers these days are actually tied into the sciences and technology especially with the evolution of the computers and the chips. I think there is just that need where kids have to have that going into a lot of the career these days.
Dr. Lisa: Why does LEGO care about robotics? Why the connection between those two things?
Jim: The robotics competition came out of the first organization which was founded Dean Kamen. He’s an innovator who invented things like the Segway and several other medical devices actually. I’m not sure of the history but I think he partnered with LEGO because it makes it accessible, it helps make the technology accessible to kids that may have already been used to playing with LEGOs. LEGO itself has always been a toy that’s geared towards creativity and getting children to design and invent on their own. The boxes come with instructions but you don’t have to follow them in order to play with the toy.
Dr. Lisa: I think that’s true. I don’t know how many times I would step on LEGOs as they were scattered across the floor. The children didn’t spend all that much time making them. I think the first time was the time that they made them, they thought they were supposed to make them into. Then, after that, they just did their own thing which is actually pretty great.
Jim: It fits well with the mission of First and the whole trying to get kids involved in a problem solving, and creativity, and technology.
Dr. Lisa: How about Odyssey of the Mind, how did that come to be?
Keith: Odyssey of the Mind was started back in 1978, I believe, by a Professor Nicholas down in New Jersey, and he’d actually given his college course kids a problem to try to solve which was to build a device that would walk across water without falling into the water. From there, he started the organization and has been going on since then.
Dr. Lisa: Each of you have children. Jim, you have two sons. Keith, you have two daughters. How has your interest in science trickled down? I guess, Keith, you said your daughter is at Brown now.
Keith: Correct. My daughter went through the Odyssey of the Mind Program, started in fifth grade, and went through eighth grade. She went out two world finals and actually won world finals in eighth grade. Then, decided with her high school workload, she wanted to not do the program as a participant anymore, but she was on the board of directors for Odyssey of the Mind as a student representative, and helped out in all of the events and the tournaments all through high school.
Dr. Lisa: How about your other daughter?
Keith: She started in second grade. This is her fifth year and this will be her fourth year going out to the world finals.
Dr. Lisa: What does your wife think about all these?
Keith: When it’s not the season, it’s okay. During the season, it eats a lot of time trying to coordinate, especially the kids have such busy schedules these days. Kids in my team do track, baseball, football, dance, math club. There’s a lot of things that you’re trying to juggle, and make it so that all seven kids can meet at the same time.
Dr. Lisa: How about you? What does your family think of these whole situation?
Jim: It’s not just for my wife or my family, it’s a big time commitment, as Keith said. I know, for us, we practice five or six hours a week pretty much September through April. That’s as much or more of a commitment than a lot of other activities or sports. It’s a busy time, for sure, and it makes you appreciate the times when you’re not busy doing those activities.
Dr. Lisa: How do your sons experience science?
Jim: They’re both very interested in it. I appreciate that they’re both well-rounded. My older son, unfortunately, when we moved to Maine, the Robotics Program hadn’t really gotten up to speed yet. He wasn’t able to participate at the same level as my younger son, but they both enjoy science and are very curious by nature. It fits well with them.
Dr. Lisa: They way you’re describing it, it sounds like a sport. It sounds like, you’re right, you’re practicing even more than your average, say, swim team and the season is probably longer than your average swim season which as a swim parent I know, that’s a long season. How do you keep your interest and energy up, especially where you both have full time jobs at Corning?
Keith: For me, keeping energy up is when you see the rewards of what the kids come out with it. I’ve had parents come up to me afterwards and say that from the beginning of the year to the end of the year, they’ve seen such a change in their child whether it’d be the interaction with other kids or their desire to go off and learn something. It’s really about where the kids grow and what you’re doing for the kids, and not just telling them how to learn it but watching as they learn how to learn. That’s what they’re going to need as they grow up and go to college.
Dr. Lisa: How about you, Jim?
Jim: Yeah, I think, as Keith mentioned, the rewards, to me, really make it an energy gain. It’s not something that drains the energy. Really, it’s easy to keep the energy up because seeing them work through problems, seeing light bulbs go off, or seeing them having fun working together, these kids aren’t always friends before they get on a team and new friendships form. All those types of things really just fuel the energy and make it easy to keep going.
Dr. Lisa: What does Corning thing of the work that you’re doing in these schools?
Jim: Corning has been great. They’ve been a great supporter both in allowing Keith and I, or at least, I know from my state, allowing us to take the time to do it because it is some time commitment, and we can’t wait necessarily until the end of the workdays. Sometimes it cuts into the workday even to do the work. From a time perspective and understanding that we have other things to do, they’ve been great, but also financially. Corning and the Corning Foundation has made several donations to the Robotics Program, to our team in particular. Obviously, it costs a lot of money to transport 14 or 15 people halfway across the country, and they really help make all that possible.
Keith: Both Corning Corporation and the Plant have been very good for my experience in Odyssey of the Mind. A combination of (a), giving me the time and allowing me the time to go off, and do the teaching that I need to do, and have the meeting stored in the week, but they’ve also been very supportive with shipping props out whether it’d would be Iowa or Michigan State, and also for the financial donations to help us defray the cost of going out to the competition.
Dr. Lisa: Do you feel this type of support from a corporation or a company, do you feel like this is unusual the interaction and support with the school system?
Keith: I don’t know how unusual it is but I think it’s something that more and more companies are looking at and are doing both from the standpoint of being good members of their community, but also from a somewhat selfish standpoint of Corning as a technology company. Corning has an interest in fueling the growth and development of the next of technology people.
Dr. Lisa: Jim, how can people find out about the First LEGO Robotics Program?
Jim: On the web, you can go to usfirst.org. There’s also a Maine Robotics Organization that’s run out of Augusta I believe. They do a lot with LEGO Robotics. They coordinate the state and regional tournaments in Maine. They also offer things like summer camps with LEGO robotic.
Dr. Lisa: Keith, how can people find out about Odyssey of the Mind?
Keith: There’s a couple of different things. In the State of Maine, there’s actually a Maine Odyssey of the Mind website, it’s meodysseyofthemind.com. For the national organization, it’s odysseyofhemind.com.
Dr. Lisa: I appreciate all that work that you’re doing in your communities. I think that it really makes me feel happy that you’ve dedicated so much time and energy to helping kids get excited about science, technology, engineering, arts, and math. I hope that people will take the time to learn more about these programs whether just on a general sense or for their own children.
We’ve been speaking with Jim Eickmann who is the Engineering Manager at the Corning Incorporated Life Sciences Plant in Kennebunk. Also, who works with the First LEGO Robotics Program in his town, Kennebunk. We’ve also been speaking with Keith Borkowski who is the Plant Controller at the Corning Incorporated Life Science Plant. Keith is also a coach with the Odyssey of the Mind team in Wells. I appreciate all the work you’re doing in the community. I also I appreciate, I think, specifically bringing Heidi Kirn’s daughter out there two years in a row, Jim. I know she’s gotten a lot out of it. I hope many more good things will come out of Odyssey of the Mind, and also the First LEGO Robotics Program in your area.
Keith: Thank you, Lisa.
Jim: Thank you very much.