Photo By John Hughel | Amanda Smith, Director of STARBASE Rees, works with student campers on flight...... read more read more
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Over the past five years, STARBASE Rees has been inspiring students across Eastern Oregon to explore the exciting world of Science, Technology, Engineering, Art/Design, and Math (STEAM). The year-round educational program empowers students to apply a “hands-on, minds-on” approach to learning that takes place through creative problem-solving, experimentation, and scientific innovation.
As the newest of the four STARBASE Oregon academies run by the Oregon Military Department, STARBASE Rees, located at Rees Training Center (RTC) near Hermiston, serves students in Umatilla and Morrow counties, as well as schools across the Oregon High Desert region, as a valuable community-based outreach educational program. STARBASE Rees is one of the 90 nationwide Department of Defense programs located on Air Force, Space Force, Army, Navy, and National Guard military bases – promoting academic development while helping shape future leaders and innovators.
With summer winding down, STARBASE Rees hosted its final summer STEAM Camp from August 18-21, giving a group of eager 5th graders a jump-start on the school year. They worked on a variety of projects over four days, including building and launching paper rockets, creating marble mazes from recycled materials, using Sphero robot balls in ‘BattleBot’ competition, learning aviation skills with laptop flight simulators, and gaining hands-on knowledge about Wildland Firefighting from the Oregon Military Department firefighters assigned to RTC.
“I wish they had this program around when I was a kid,” said John Stubbs, helping lead the summer camp, and is a full-time Learning and Development Specialist at STARBASE Rees. “This program is very hands-on. We get to walk around and help them, and after they have completed a couple of projects, they’re learning math or some engineering skills and don’t even realize it until they're done.”
The STARBASE Rees classrooms have a vibrant and energetic atmosphere, complete with painted murals on the walls and some ceilings, colorful floor patterns, and workstations designed for creating limitless projects.
Originally built in 1941, the facility served as the on-base bowling alley for the Umatilla Army Ordnance Depot. Although the depot officially closed in 2012 after all chemical weapons were incinerated, the complex process of transferring the Umatilla Depot to the National Guard began with the completion of a license agreement in 2017. On September 29, 2022, the depot was officially renamed the Raymond F. Rees Training Center, in honor of the former Adjutant General of the Oregon National Guard.
Found on one of the walls now is an array of spaceships that Stubbs made in his woodshop at home, which inspires kids to build their own straw and paper rockets in class. He said there is a sense of “continuous learning” built into the overall program.
“I found myself measuring in the metric system now more than the standard inch and foot…and now I am teaching it…it seems so easy,” Stubbs said. “When I graduated High School, personal computers were just coming out, and I never really got into fully utilizing them – yet now I enjoy that I can take a photograph, turn it into a cartoon character, and then create a 3D (dimensional) print.”
In many ways, the hands-on approach with the STARBASE program allows students to thrive outside of the traditional education model. With no tests or grades to limit their experience, every activity is deemed a success, encouraging a culture of innovation and working in groups to develop collaborative solutions. Often during the summer camp session, campers would work on a design or construction project alone, like the paper rockets, only to share what they had just done with someone sitting next to them for validation.
“The classes during the school year are a little different than the summer camps, but it’s pretty much the same feedback loop,” Stubbs said. “There is a set curriculum during the course of the school year. We have a set class that we teach every Monday through Friday, and the courses meet all of the state education requirements.”
As the program has evolved over the past five years at STARBASE Rees, in Fiscal Year 2024, to align with the Every Student Succeeds Act [Section 4107], the program transitioned from a Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) program to a Science, Technology, Engineering, Art and Design, and Mathematics (STEAM) program.
In February of 2025, STARBASE Rees, along with STARBASE academies in Oregon at Klamath Falls, Portland, and Camp Rilea, as well as locations across the country, faced closure while waiting for a federal budget to pass. In March, a Continuing Resolution with the STARBASE funding passed the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate.
“When we learned that funding had stopped for this important program, Representative McIntire and I went to work contacting the key legislators, the Governor, our Federal partners, and the Oregon Military Department, advocating to restore funding,” said Representative E. Werner Reschke, Oregon House District 55, in a released statement on March 15. “We are pleased to see that the bipartisan Continuing Resolution passed by Congress will restore funding for STARBASE.”
“It’s hard right now because we have an open position I need to fill because of federal funding,” said Amanda Smith, who serves both as the State of Oregon Training and Development supervisor and, in her federal capacity, is the Director of STARBASE Rees. “I am probably doing 50% of the teaching in the class right now, but at full staff, we have two teachers working with the kids over the course of the week. This way, each teacher is saying things in their own tone of voice so that the children have someone they can relate to, and it helps reinforce lesson plans.”
When federal funding is approved, Smith said she plans to add a new teacher to the program at a competitive salary. “It’s our goal to be able to employ the best teacher out there and match what a school district is at.”
Smith first started working at STARBASE Rees in November 2022 and then became director in April of 2023. She noted that one of the changes that has taken place is the classroom size during the school year.
“After COVID, the first four classes we saw were very small that year; we were lucky if we had 12 children in the classroom,” she explained. “The class size has been steadily climbing. So we’re expecting probably 30 children per class and can handle up to 40.”
Scheduling the classes and camps throughout the year can be a complicated task, but Sharon Trumbul keeps all the schools organized as the office manager for STARBASE Rees. On a large wall calendar, most of the school year has been filled in, including some camps during winter break.
“It's been a very busy summer, and we have done seven summer camps, and we can do camps during Christmas and spring breaks too,” Trumbul said, detailing the balancing act of courses and schools involved with the STARBASE program. “We coordinate with the schools, working with their schedules to plan out our openings for the school year. This includes students coming from the Athena-Weston area, and that’s an hour-plus ride each way.”
Many of the schools in Eastern Oregon are on a four-day week schedule, and Trumbul tracks that they line up with weekly lesson plans. In some cases, like Helix School District, the staff often will travel to the school to teach the classes and give them follow-up assignments and supplies.
“Yeah, it can be a little tricky, because we don’t want to have them miss any of the lessons. Coordinating this in advance, we can ensure they get the full benefits of the program,” she said.
In light of the staffing challenges at STARBASE Rees, Trumbul has helped out in the classroom. During the final summer camp, she was working with kids on rocket construction, capturing their creativity and excitement. She also joined in with firefighters, helping kids use a fire hose to knock down targets.
“The things they learn with all the hands-on experience they get here, it is just amazing for the kid,” she said. “It’s just awesome to see the light bulbs go off over their head when they accomplish something new for the first time.”
According to Smith, this type of “hands-on, inquiry-based, cross-curricular activities” offered by the STARBASE program is key to its success since it was introduced over 30 years ago. She highlighted the effectiveness of the curriculum in teaching STEAM and emphasized that raising awareness about the STARBASE program positively impacts the community in Eastern Oregon schools.
“We’ve had a lot of success with Lego Robots. It's hands-on, and they're using both screens and things they can construct with their hands,” she said. “Kids really want to do that kind of stuff because they have to work through the process on multiple levels.”
While attending STARBASE, whether it is during the school year or for a seasonal camp, Smith said that there are four key areas of success they strive for.
“Respect, dedication, responsibility, and teamwork,” she emphasized. “We will have up to 1,500 students use some of the same equipment for the entire year, so stressing personal responsibility to take care of classroom items is essential.”
During the summer camp, it was easy to see the other three traits in action, as student campers helped each other, utilizing teamwork skills to solve a problem, or hurried through lunch, excited to get back to work on their ‘BattleBots.’
"Each day the kids attend, we assign them different roles," Smith explained, as this approach allows them to experience various responsibilities while learning and completing tasks. “In doing so, they gain an understanding of everyone's contributions and recognize the importance of each of their roles in successfully finishing any project."
| Date Taken: | 08.28.2025 |
| Date Posted: | 08.29.2025 14:02 |
| Story ID: | 546899 |
| Location: | HERMISTON, OREGON, US |
| Web Views: | 62 |
| Downloads: | 1 |
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