LTCDC

The Leadership/Teamwork/Communications Design Challenge, or LTCDC, is an educational experience that is unique to CVGS. This mini-course is broken into three main sections. The first section teaches students leadership, teamwork, and communication skills through readings, videos, and active medium-size group discussions (about 12 students). The second section helps students implement those skills while working in small groups (about 4 students) through various LEGO design and build challenges. The third section is a design challenge in which the entire senior class works in medium size subgroups (about 8 students) and as a larger single group (about 75 students) to design a well-researched and detailed grant proposal for a scientific mission to a remote location. The LTCDC culminates with a subgroup by subgroup presentation of the proposal. 

The photo above, and those below, show the unlikely outcome of the work done several members of the CVGS Class 2022 who, as part of the Design Challenge, designed a robot that was actually transported to the Antarctic to test its ability to function in that extreme environment. This amazing reality was the result of the alignment of that year's design challenge with a CVGS parent who was working with the National Science Foundation on an actual Antarctic science mission that same year. While we certainly don't anticipate having this type of opportunity every year, with the unique connections of our CVGS community, it is likely that other amazing opportunities will present themselves in the years to come!