Grades 6-12; Boarding 8-12

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Susan Wirsig, Director, Applied Science Certificate Program, Teacher of Computer Science and Engineering, Teacher of Mathematics

If we, as teachers, strive to inspire our students to continue doing good work once they’ve left Pennington, Ms. Sue Wirsig certainly lives this axiom. Although she has only been with us for about a dozen years, Ms. Wirsig has quickly passed along her love of research and product development to current students and alumni alike.

After earning a bachelor’s, then a master’s degree in education at Queen’s University, Ontario, Ms. Wirsig first taught math at a high school in Canada. Following a desire to learn more and do research, Ms. Wirsig worked with professors at Cornell to design elementary science curricula. Shortly afterward, she pursued a master’s program at Harvard University that focused on curriculum development. While at Harvard, she worked for a research project called, “Teaching for Understanding,” and through this work, she has developed curricula with educational leaders all over the world including Canada, Namibia, and Jordan.  

In 2011, Ms. Wirsig joined The Pennington School, bringing with her a wealth of knowledge using the “Teaching for Understanding” pedagogy to design curricula. She continued to conduct research part-time with Harvard during her first five years at Pennington while teaching Middle School algebra. 

No doubt Ms. Wirsig’s classroom teaching has benefited from her work with developing content-based curricula, such as when she worked with Namibian educators to integrate agricultural concepts into their science and math programs. Wirsig is a strong believer that applying skills through action makes learning relevant and engaging, which is evident in the math labs that she leads with her algebra students and is also the focus of the Design Engineering course that she teaches to Upper School students as part of the Applied Science Certificate Program. As founder of this program, Ms. Wirsig has already witnessed former program participants make tangible contributions to the STEM field with their own impressive, scientific endeavors. For example, recent Pennington graduate Gabriela Cano ’19 spoke this past year to Pennington’s Applied Science students about her design of a neonatal cap for babies in the NICU. The project, called Sonura, was part of Cano’s senior design class at the University of Pennsylvania, and her team was awarded the President’s Innovation Prize for their work. 

Aside from teaching academic classes, Ms. Wirsig has founded some clubs whose scope goes far beyond that of a standard after-school activity. One such club began when Ms. Wirsig discovered that the School was starting to collect a large number of used iPads due to upgrades in technology. When a friend of hers who was volunteering at a refugee camp in Malawi told Ms. Wirsig about the poor learning conditions there, Ms. Wirsig had an idea: What if Pennington students refurbish the used iPads and then took them to the camp to train students and teachers on how to use them? 

The iPad Club did just that! In 2019, Ms. Wirsig and students traveled to Malawi to deliver the devices and to teach some STEM-based skills. Ms. Wirsig, in turn, came back to Pennington with no fewer than eight new ideas for initiatives to use STEM skills to improve the lives of refugees at this camp. Today, many of these ideas are a reality. 

While at the camp, Pennington students noticed there were few girls enrolled in the high school. It turns out girls miss a week of school each month due to a lack of sanitary products. This was just enough missed school time to pull them away from academic dreams and towards domestic responsibilities. Because water is so scarce at the camp, reusable sanitary pads were not a good option, and there was no money for disposable pads. Ms. Wirsig formed a club that analyzed the problem and eventually developed a hybrid sanitary napkin that can be cleaned more easily. Pennington students have traveled to Malawi to deliver this product and to train local people on the production of it, offering a sustainable way for young women there to both earn money and solve a problem. Currently, WISSP (Women in STEM Solving Problems) has two USA patents pending! 

On their first trips, Pennington students also remarked on how crowded the refugee camp schools were. With only 7,000 seats for 12,000 children, most young people learn while sitting on the floor. Pennington students came home and went to work on a desk design. Once the design was completed, they found a factory in Lilongwe to produce the desks, then traveled to Malawi to visit the factory and bring the new desks to a classroom at the refugee camp. In June 2024, Pennington students will deliver another set of desks, (the third!), of the unique Pennington design. 

With water being such a precious commodity in the camp, Pennington students, with Ms. Wirsig’s support, founded a club called The Better Kitchen Sink. Students are currently developing a water filtration system that will allow refugees to reclaim gray water so that they can reuse it to wash clothing and dishes. This in turn will help people to conserve the community’s drinking water supply. And for students who enjoy working with their hands, Ms. Wirsig’s Outdoor Play Space club is designing a musical outdoor play area for a hospital in Malawi. 

Ms. Wirsig recognizes the students’ dedication to these projects. Due to conflicting schedules, students often meet in the evenings and on Sundays to devote the time necessary to them. She said she finds it inspiring to work with youth who truly believe they can make a difference in the world. “It’s the unpaid benefit of my job,” she says. 

Ms. Wirsig estimates that there are currently a dozen alumni who continue to work on these projects during their college years. One student, studying industrial design in college, has drawn images for the water filter that will support the group when applying for a patent. Other students are assisting in the actual design of the filter and with the statistical analysis behind its testing. Two alumni who are studying global health will travel to Malawi this summer for an eight-week internship at the hospital that will receive the Pennington-designed Outdoor Musical Playspace. Others are working with their professors and with nonprofit organizations on projects connected to the work that they started at Pennington to benefit communities in Africa. 

Ms. Wirsig, whose three children are all Pennington alumni (Sydney ’19, Molly ’21, Max ’22), is certainly dedicated to igniting a spark in young people to not only learn hard concepts, but also to apply their understanding of these concepts to better the lives of others!