SRVTHS Student Invents New Plumbing Design

Trinity Seymour captured the silver medal in the Engineering category at the NAACP ACT-SO (Afro-Academic, Cultural, Technological and Scientific Olympics) event at the Messiah Baptist Church in Brockton for her innovative plumbing design for grease traps and interceptor. “Everybody’s been telling me I should go on ‘Shark Tank,’ and my parents say I should go for a patent,” said Miss Seymour.

ACT-SO is “a yearlong achievement program designed to recruit, stimulate and encourage high academic and cultural achievement among African-American high school students,” according to the organization’s website. Trinity is among the almost 300,000 youth participants since the program began in 1978. She will be going to Philadelphia in July as an observer to the next level of competition, in order to prepare for next year. “The judges wrote such good things about her ideas and how she presented it, that they recommended that she go,” said her mom, Denise Seymour.

“Mr. Pereira, my plumbing teacher, encouraged me to do this project, which is also my senior project,” she explained. “I needed certain materials in my plumbing class that I wasn’t familiar with. Mr. Pereira broke things down into ways I could understand.” Trinity took her invention to the high school’s Science Fair Coordinator, Mr. David Kent, who immediately saw the value in her unique entry. “Mr. Kent, directed me to Pat Monteith (Science fair mentor, coach and former extended day instructor at SRVTHS) who connected me with ACT-SO.”

Following her ACT-SO win, Trinity’s mother encouraged her daughter to attend an event at Massasoit Community College for female engineers going into STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) trades. There the high school junior was directed to information on patents. She is seeking financial backing to improve her product through further testing, which can prove to be expensive.

The Southeastern Regional Voc Tech school committee presented Trinity with a proclamation to recognize her achievements at the June meeting. Miss Seymour will receive her silver medal at the Brockton NAACP ACT-SO Awards Ceremony and Fundraiser on June 20, 2015, at Luminosity in Stoughton. Proceeds will help support the cost of sending Trinity to the National NAACP ACT-SO High School Competition.

Trinity has a plan for the future. “I already have next year’s science fair work completed and turned in. For college, I want to go to Wentworth, Northeastern or the University of New Hampshire for mechanical engineering. After college I want to design high quality water and drainage systems.”

Southeastern Regional Vocational Technical High School is a public 9-12 vocational high school located in South Easton, Massachusetts, serving approximately 1,400 students from the City of Brockton and the towns of East Bridgewater, Easton, Foxborough, Mansfield, Norton, Sharon, Stoughton and West Bridgewater.