Creating the Future

Application Period for 2026 STEM Awards Opens Aug. 1.

President Abraham Lincoln once said, "The best way to predict the future is to create it."

The first Kentucky-born president would be proud of how today’s young creators in the Valley region are building their own futures with modern tools.

At only 19, Aaron Brown has been equipping himself with skills of the future for the last several years, thanks to a strong work ethic and the Todd County (Kentucky) School System’s commitment to provide students access to modern curriculum for modern careers.

That means exciting new opportunities in STEM.

Teachers in the Todd County School System have received $59,000 in STEM and Robotics awards since TVA and Bicentennial Volunteers, Inc. began offering the funds that help underserved schools have access to the same programming as schools in America’s most affluent neighborhoods. The application period for 2026 awards opens Aug. 1 at tva.com/stem.

“In my junior year and then my senior year I did a 3D printing class and got an enhanced operator certification,” said Brown, who was accepted to a two-year paid internship at Novelis in Guthrie, Kentucky, while he completed an associate degree in industrial maintenance at nearby Hopkinsville Community College.

Chris Skipworth was one of Brown’s instructors at Todd County Central High School’s Advanced Manufacturing Technology Center, where he taught Engineering I&II, Intro to Computer Aided Drafting, Intro to Unmanned Aerial Systems and Intro to 3D Printing for the last five years.

“We’re just introducing kids to all things engineering,” said Skipworth, who will teach at the IMPACT Center in Warren County, Kentucky, in the upcoming school year. “We’re exposing them to what it is, just to try to spark a thought to help some of them to decide what it is they want to do with the rest of their life.”

With the STEM awards they have received over the years, Todd Central has purchased drones, 3D printers, robots, supplies, blueprint kits and more.

That type of hands-on learning is what inspired Brown and provided him with real-world experiences at such an early age.

“So, what we do is we troubleshoot machines that break down, we fix machines and we do it on a time crunch usually because production is running,” Brown said of his duties during the internship at Novelis. “I also do preventative maintenance, so we lube and grease the machines when they're down and keep everything running smoothly.”

Inspiration doesn’t need to wait until high school. In fact, the Todd County Middle School celebrated the opening of a Cal Ripken, Sr. Foundation STEM Center in partnership with TVA and Pennyrile Electric in April. The partnership between the Ripken Foundation and TVA focuses on schools and community-based youth organizations, especially in underserved and rural communities. STEM Centers are equipped with hands-on tools designed to close opportunity gaps and support at-risk students.

“Some of my students are drawn to our 3D printers,” said Maggie Kulesza, the STEAM teacher at Todd County Middle. “A lot of them like the robotics and a lot of them like the K’nex. Anything robotics, anything that moves, anything that challenges them to make something move, they love it.”

Forty-six TVA Cal Ripken STEM Centers have been established across the region since fall 2023.

Students as young as five are exposed to robotics and STEM education in Todd County. Erica Skipworth, wife of Chris, was a STEAM teacher at South Todd Elementary School near Guthrie, which has received multiple robotics and STEM awards.

She used a 2025 robotics award to buy new Lego robotics sets, which allowed entire classes to participate in robotics instead of limiting them to smaller STEAM clubs or teams. She also used STEM awards to buy virtual reality headsets, 3D printers and Bee-Bots – small robots that look like bumble bees and introduce computer programming to very young students with simple tasks.

Early exposure to STEM tools and curriculum can create new pathways for how even the youngest learners think.

“It’s really good with problem-solving,” Erica said. “They don’t play board games like they used to, so where they used to get that kind of one-to-one correspondence and see the pathways through board games, this kind of allows them to make that transfer that they are not getting.

Brown believes the exposure to real-life work experiences he got in school helped at the beginning of his career. “It did,” he said. “It gave me an idea of what I was expecting when I got out into the real world.”

He entered that “real world” on May 18 when he worked his first day as a full-time maintenance technician at a Hopkinsville, Kentucky, company. He will work on machines in the assembly lines that create hydraulic steering and motors for tractors, mowers and other equipment.

For advice he’d give to young people interested in a similar path: “The technical and maintenance field offers strong long-term career opportunities for students who enjoy hands-on problem-solving and working with systems that keep essential facilities running. With a large portion of the workforce nearing retirement, there is growing demand for new skilled workers to enter and develop in the field. You just have to have the initiative to do it."