Meet the team from the Raymore-Peculiar High School

Our Research group is made up of four very different students and one very dedicated teacher. Each student brings something different and important to the table. To start we have our high school’s Physics teacher Mr. Gray, who is possibly the best teacher our high school has to offer. We have a very technologically inclined researcher named Nathan Boehning; he can pretty much make the impossible happen on his computer. We have a nationally recognized forensic researcher, Todd Bowles that is also very inclined in everything dealing with science. Another important person in our team is Tommy Stegmaier, who is very good in all things math related and extremely dedicated in everything he does. Last but not least, we have Savannah Zielinski who is very good at all things dealing with physics and science. She is incredibly creative due to her background in music. Our group is very diverse, having specialists in many different areas, but overall we are very dedicated to our school work and learning new things.

Not only is our research group very diverse but so is our school. Our school is made up of over five different town populations. Starting with Lee’s Summit Missouri, we have a more, big city group of students. Next, we have a big population of students from Raymore, and Belton Missouri, which are more traditional suburb types of towns. In contrast we have a dense population of students from places like Pleasant Hill, and Peculiar Missouri; just like you would expect from the name of a town like Peculiar there is an unusual breed of people that live there, it is more of a rural/outdoorsy kind of town that is surrounded by big suburbs.  The student population of Raymore Peculiar high school is very diverse, which is important for the best opportunity of different ideas and growth. This makes our high school perfect for the research our group will be doing.

Nathan Boehning
Age: 17
Interests: Robotics, computer programming, networking and AI
College plans: Drury University/ Missouri S&T

Todd Bowles
Age: 17
Interests: Theater, Hunting/Fishing, Weight lifting
College plans: University of Missouri

Thomas Stegmaier
Age: 17
Interests: Mechanical engineering, Hunting/ Fishing, general outdoors activities
College plans: U.S. Naval Academy and career in Navy, Mechanical engineering

Savannah Zielinski
Age:17
Interests: Dirt bikes, Modeling, guitar, singing
College plans: Texas University or Berkley for Physics

Darrick Gray
Years teaching: 12
Interests: Amateur astronomy, golf, bbq and family time
College: AA, BS, MS – Mississippi State

Angelina Mills
Age:17
Interests: Music, astronomy, singing, meteorology
College plans: University of Oklahoma, astronomy

Meet the Raymore-Peculiar High School Mentor, Dr. Michelle Kirchoff

I have been interested in science ever since I was a kid. First it was playing with chemicals making my hands turn interesting colors, then it was physics and the night sky. I decided to major in physics and astronomy for my undergraduate degree. While working on that degree I took a planetary science and a geology course, both which I found really interesting. That is when I decided to pursue a PhD in planetary geology. I received my PhD from Washington University in St. Louis studying how mountains form on Jupiter's moon Io. Then I went on to a postdoctoral position at the Lunar and Planetary Institute and studied craters and their distributions on Saturn's moons. Now I am a research scientist at Southwest Research Institute still studying craters, extending on to the Moon and Mars, because I find them so interesting!