Even the COVID-19 pandemic couldn’t stop the annual HUNCH culinary challenge, and one Virginia school took third place in the first-ever partially virtual event.
HUNCH, or High school students United with NASA to Create Hardware, develops high school students in many ways by highlighting their talents in order to contribute to NASA’s missions. The program provides students hands-on experience with the space agency — such as building NASA-designed parts for use by astronauts aboard the International Space Agency, agency personnel, or food for astronauts to enjoy.
Bridging Communities Regional Career and Technical Center of New Kent, Virginia cooked a pineapple chicken stir-fry as their entrée. The team members are Marissa Halbig, Madison Halsey and Will Holt and the team was coached by Chef Lincoln Marquis.
“I’m proud of the team and what they produced under unusual circumstances,” Marquis said. “They gained many new skills and confidence overcoming pretty big challenges to succeed at an important and authentic project.”
Before NASA centers restricted visitors and began wide-scale teleworking due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Bridging Communities and other local high school teams competed at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia in the nationwide program Feb. 24 to put their best entrées forward.
“Collaborating with Bridging Communities Regional Career and Technical Center is an example of how NASA Langley continues to expand and grow the HUNCH Program,” said Yolanda Watford Simmons, program manager of Langley’s Engineering Directorate and the center’s HUNCH program. “I am excited about reaching more school districts through HUNCH.”
The first-place dish, a Moroccan chicken tagine, was made by Hewitt Trussville High School in Trussville, Alabama. Their dish will go to the International Space Station. The second-place entrée, Indian butternut and mango chicken, was cooked by the Secchia Institute for Culinary Education in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
“This year is Bridging Communities Regional Career and Technical Center’s first year working with Langley’s HUNCH Program during my management,” Simmons said. “It was rewarding to see the students and Chef Marquis interact during my class visits as well as during the HUNCH Preliminary Culinary Challenge; they truly respect Chef Marquis.”
Because of COVID-19, schools were unable to travel to NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston for the HUNCH Culinary Finals. Therefore, the top ten finalists, one of which included Phoebus High School, were determined based on each school’s video (55 percent) and their entrée/final research paper (45 percent).
“Celebrating this achievement was certainly affected by our remote circumstance,” Marquis said. “That being said, and while we haven’t participated in this contest before there were elements of our submission that I was confident would help us stand out from the crowd and I had some confidence that we would place.”
For their third-place finish, the Bridging Communities students will receive a $20,000 scholarship to Sullivan University in Louisville, Kentucky. Also, the American Culinary Federation will provide each student the with $2,000 to the winning school’s culinary program, an all-access virtual pass to the ACF National Conference, and the opportunity to take the Certificate of Culinary Essentials and 14 courses under the UNITED Online Learning Bundle.
“The student’s culinary skills, communication skills, teamwork, professionalism, and time management were vital to their successful win,” Simmons said.
This is the first year that HUNCH collaborated with Sullivan University and the American Culinary Federation.
From a program perspective, this is the third consecutive win for Langley under Simmons’s management. In 2019, Phoebus High School in Hampton, Virginia won the HUNCH Culinary Challenge with their Organic Harvest Hash submitted to the International Space Station for astronauts to enjoy. In 2018, Gloucester High School in Gloucester, Virginia won the Video and Media Challenge.
Eric Gillard
NASA Langley Research Center