And work is also progressing, said Robert Viney, vice president and program executive of the Submarine Cincinnati Memorial Association, on developing educational partnerships with the local Lakota and Mason school, Butler Tech as well as Indian Hills Schools in northeast Hamilton County.
The submarine replica, which will include the large, original conning tower as well as other parts of the USS Cincinnati, will also feature interactive learning kiosks with STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) instructional programs tied in with instructional programs at the partner school districts.
“Being able to walk through the submarine replica … opened up our thinking about what additional education we could add to the design,” said Viney.
“With STEM education becoming so important globally in the decade since we first started working on the memorial concept, we knew pretty quickly that the full size replica of a nuclear power submarine provided a great opportunity for educating youngsters on the science, technology, engineering and math behind the many operational aspects of a nuclear submarine.”
“After contacting several companies about all-weather interactive kiosks, we begin looking at designing interactive programs that would not give every youngster a ‘canned’ set of videos but would provide them the answers to questions that they are interested to learn about how a nuclear submarine operates,” said Viney.
The $9.5 million memorial will combine with the VOA Museum to create the largest War World II and Cold War memorial sites in southwest Ohio and after its scheduled opening in April 2026 is expected to draw tourists from across the region.
Molding the STEM educational kiosks to grade-school learning levels will require a unified coordination between school districts and the memorial development not seen before in the northern Greater Cincinnati area, said Viney.
“We knew that those of us who served on nuclear power submarines could explain the technologies and science behind them to adults. But we knew that the explanations for elementary school students were not the same as the explanations to high school students.”
“So we set up meetings with the (district) superintendents and explained our concept for the STEM educational elements. All were very enthusiastic about the learning opportunities that the program we described would provide for their students,” he said.
“Now that AI (artificial intelligence) has become so quickly established, we are working with an agency that specializes in AI interfaces to help us develop AI Avatars of USS Cincinnati crew members, who will engage the youngsters in a conversational mode to find out what they want to know about nuclear submarine operations, and then narrate the answer, provided by animated graphics to explain the science and videos to show the working element on the submarine.”
According to the group’s web page, the USS Cincinnati memorial will be a “unique patriotic, historic and educational asset to the community.”
FUNDS SOUGHT
An additional $1.1 million is needed to complete the memorial construction, and fundraising at the Submarine Cincinnati Memorial Association website is available for individual and business donations. Visit https://subcincy.org to get more information.
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