SeaPerch Engineering Competition Honors Grow For Manchester Middle STEM Students

MANCHESTER, NJ — Three Manchester Township Middle School teams brought home honors at the annual SeaPerch Challenge, another round of success for the district's eighth-grade engineering program.

The program launched in 2015 as part of the district's STEM expansion that was funded by a $10,000 grant. The expansion included having the eighth-grade STEM classes take part in the SeaPerch robotics experience.

SeaPerch simulates a real-world engineering environment as students build submersible remotely operated vehicles. Students are not only required to build the ROVs, but also to create their own company, assign roles, set goals, track their progress through electronic logs and videos, and present a final project in a multimedia format.

Teams from Manchester — both middle school and high school— have been competing at SeaPerch yearly since the classroom launched and have seen success, including in 2024 when a middle school team competed in the International SeaPerch Challenge.

Each year, SeaPerch is built around a real-world problem that students are asked to address through design and engineering. This year’s theme, Storm Response: Technology in Action for Recovery and Relief, focused on missions that simulate disaster recovery efforts. Students were tasked with creating ROVs capable of completing those assignments in competition.

The middle school's trio of teams competed at a regional event in Neptune and won the Overall Team Spirit Award while placing third overall and taking third place in the open competition.

Beyond the competition, the program introduces students to practical engineering challenges and asks them to work together under pressure. The competition also encourages students to think about future careers in naval architecture, marine engineering and ocean engineering.

The results from this year’s competition reflected both technical skills and teamwork, and showed how classroom engineering lessons can connect to larger issues, including technology used in response and recovery work after major storms.

The STEM classroom was funded through a $10,000 Model Classroom Grant from the Ocean First Foundation, which awarded it in the fall of 2014. The grant allowed the district to purchase needed equipment and furniture along with SeaPerch materials.

Sixth- and seventh-graders also use the room but take part in different STEM activities.