Contributed EXPANDING KNOWLEDGE — About 200 seventh-and eighth-graders at Buckeye Local Junior High School participated in the Mobile Oilfield Learning Unit.

CONNORVILLE — Buckeye Local Junior High School students explored opportunities and careers with a visit from the Mobile Oilfield Learning Unit.

About 200 students in grades 5-8 took part and teamed up in pairs to complete interactive lessons. The unit, which is sponsored by the American Petroleum Institute and Energy Education Foundation, is a traveling exhibit designed to teach middle-school students about science, technology, engineering and math and expose them to an array of careers offered in the energy industry through educational activities.

It contains six mobile units with a total of 24 activities and students rotate around each unit to complete the lessons in timed sessions. Topics include safety, engineering, the oil industry, microorganisms, seismology, robotics and more and students learned about everything from fractional distillation to petroleum products.

According to the MOLU website, students are tested to establish baseline knowledge before interacting with the stations, and then they complete a post-test to determine what they have learned. On average, student scores improve by 50 percent following the lessons. The program became popular in Texas and Louisiana, which has led energy firms Cabot, Shell, Schlumberger, Southwestern Energy and Williams to fund the creation of a new unit that is now based in the Appalachian Basin and serves Ohio, West Virginia and Pennsylvania.

“This program is new to Ohio,” said Principal Jason Kovalski. “We held four, 80-minute sessions and there were groups of students who worked in pairs and moved through four parts of each station.”

The students received booklets corresponding with the activities to help them learn about the products created and how the process works.

Ben Marter, vice president of communications and public affairs for API, said the organization partnered with the Energy Education Fund to bring the exhibit to school districts and the program was created to teach middle school students about STEM and the many careers available in the industry.

“This has been around for a few years, but this is a new partnership between API and the Energy Education Foundation with a goal of educating 10,000 students in the 2023 calendar year,” Marter added. “(The program has visited) 16 different school districts and 26 total visits in several states. We’ve had 2,760 students, 315 adults or teachers and volunteers interact with the MOLU so far.”

He said students have enjoyed engaging with the MOLU and completed a pre-exhibit survey before touring the MOLU, and in turn have improved their understanding of the industry by 24 percent.