Love of technology and history earns STEM student national recognition
Well-spoken, knowledgeable, and miles ahead of his peers. That’s the feeling you get, just 2 minutes into a conversation with Nathan Copeland. He has just won BEST HIGH SCHOOL STEM Student from the Constituting America’s annual “We the Future” scholarship competition.
“It was about the United States constitution. So it covered multiple different educational aspects,” Copeland said.
Nathan is a ninth-grader at the STEM Academy at LEE High School. His eighth-grade PreAP World History Teacher, Michael Gossett, couldn’t be more impressed with this young man, “very self-motivated young man, always excited about the new topics we had and embraced everything full force.”
Copeland’s your average 14-year-old, he plays tennis, he has toast for breakfast, but he really, really likes to build websites.
“I have done lots of websites before, I have done them for non-profits, done them for my dad, I’ve done them the National History Day fair for my teacher…I just really like making websites.”
And he’s kind of into history too.
“World War II is very interesting to me because I can see the moving parts with multiple different countries. And that’s where we had a very bad event occurring in Europe, and yet, the world was still able to rally around that, “Copeland said.
His scholarship-winning project for “We the Future” combined his two favorite things, history and website building. His website takes a closer look at the constitution and explains what it means to us today.
“I really like that they were able to start it off with WE THE PEOPLE,” Copeland said, “that’s a very generic line that you hear all the time, but it really puts a spin on what the constitution is for America, and that is that it is for us we can change it. We can mold it. We can amend it.”
But along with being pretty fun for Copeland, the competition came with a pretty cool prize: $1000 scholarship and a fully-funded trip to Washington, D.C.
He credits the STEM Academy with giving him the knowledge and tools he needed to win this competition.
Copeland said, “There’s not a lot of stem programs out there that are full time like this,” adding, “I was really able to grow my technological advancement over time…so it was really a building on the knowledge, and that’s how I was able to apply this to this contest.”
Nathan’s love of learning not only challenges him but helps his teachers grow too.
“So students like him, I think it really helps me to feel that challenge,” Gossett said, “ how can I improve it, can I tweak it this way so that it’s a better way for them to learn it or will bring it to more of their interest and also fit their needs.”
Nathan’s only 14, so he’s not quite ready to tell us where he wants to go to college, but he will most likely have his pick of the litter. But that’s not to say he doesn’t have a plan, right now he’s interested in law and how his website making skills can help him in business in the future.
