Deep in the dungeon of St. Dominic resides Mr. Bob Hennekes and Mr. Jim Zuroweste. They are both gifted teachers with a passion for their subjects. Over the course of the year, both teachers test their students with challenging projects to showcase their best skills.

Mr. Hennekes teaches Engineering and Chemistry. He is an amazing mentor for his students and pushes them to stretch the limits. The projects in Mr. Hennekes’ Engineering class, such as the bridge project, are no joking matter.

“The idea for them is to understand how to make a bridge strong… I have cast them to build a bridge that is 18 inches across… as a minimum [it] has to hold 25 pounds and if they get a bridge that holds 25 pounds, they pass… it’s a graded scale from 25 to 35 pounds. Depending on how much weight they hold gets them their grade in the class. The idea is to learn how to build a bridge with trusses to make it strong so that if they ever become engineers in the future and they build a bridge across the Missouri or Mississippi River, they build it strong enough so that it can hold all the cars on the bridge at any point in time,” said Mr. Hennekes.

This project may seem impossible, but it does not hold a candle to the intricate marble sorting project to come next semester.

Right next door, Mr. Zuroweste, more commonly known as Mr. Z, has been conducting labs of his own. Mr. Z commissioned his students to build their very own mouse trap cars.

“We had to create a car that was propelled by air from a balloon. We could only use common household materials, such as cardboard, CDs, water bottles and bottle caps. The car had to successfully roll up to five meters for us to pass the lab,” said senior Andrea Ducharme.

Physics is a tough subject, which is easy to figure out if you talk to a student in the class. Despite their qualms, it teaches valuable perspectives on the fundamentals of life and opens the door to curiosity.

“If you ask the physics students, they will tell you it is very hard. There is a lot of math and they have to understand the concepts and be able to apply the math, so that is challenging… [but] Physics is ‘phun,’” said Mr. Z.

Mr. Z and Mr. Hennekes both know how to get their students engaged in the classroom, which will surely lead to prepared experts in the workforce. Just having a conversation with the two teachers, it is clear that they bring their own love of science into the classroom. Learning from Mr. Hennekes and Mr. Z offers a unique opportunity for the students at St. Dominic, and it should be taken advantage of.

“Being an engineering student is a lot about not doing math, not doing science and not doing anything in particular, but using your brain to solve a whole bunch of different things and using the math and science that you learn to try to make a problem go away,” said Mr. Hennekes.

Whether you are a prospective Physics or Engineering student, or just plain curious about their projects, stop by the dungeon and say hello to Mr. Z or Mr. Hennekes. They have plenty to share and always have a smile ready for visiting students.