THE RAYE MONTAGUE STEAM INITIATIVE
Named in honor of the United States Navy’s first female Program Manager of Ships, OHPRI’s Raye Montague STEAM Initiative provides hands-on experiences related to ship design, construction and operation. Through these experiences, both underway and alongside, we teach not only basic seamanship, but also provide a challenging platform for leadership development, technology and innovation, civic engagement, and ocean literacy.
WHAT IS STEAM?
The STEAM acronym stands for Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, and Mathematics. Previously known as STEM, without the Arts component, STEAM is a growing curriculum designed to integrate STEM into various relevant disciplines with the addition of the arts. These programs teach students to use creative approaches to real-world problems while building upon a base of mathematics and the sciences.
PROGRAMMING ABOARD OLIVER HAZARD PERRY
Our unique shipboard programs target students, from K-12 through university level, providing a foundation for understanding principles of STEAM and how these principles relate to operations aboard a ship such as Oliver Hazard Perry. For more information, please contact info@ohpri.org or call our office at (401) 841-0080.
- K-12 Year-Round and After-School Programming
- Unique hands-on STEAM programs that coincide with Rhode Island’s Standards of Learning, customized and tailored to each school, department, and/or grade level. Programs run multi-day, full day, or partial day. Oliver Hazard Perry also welcomes larger school groups on board for field trips, which include tours of the ship and shorter STEAM-based learning components.
- University and Continuing Education Programming
- Partnering with local universities and institutions for higher learning, OHPRI's programs for students focus on maritime education and history as well as practical application of STEAM concepts in marine design, construction, and operations.
About Raye Montague
Raye Jean Montague was an African-American naval engineer who served as the program director for the Naval Sea Systems Command (NAVSEA) Integrated Design, Manufacturing, and Maintenance Program, the division head for the Computer-Aided Design and Computer-Aided Manufacturing (CAD/CAM) Program, and deputy program manager of the Navy's Information Systems Improvement Program. She created the first computer-generated ship design, the Oliver Hazard Perry Class Frigate, during the height of the Vietnam War in the early 1970s, using a computer program she developed, in less than 19 hours.
Montague received the Navy’s Meritorious Civilian Service Award in 1972, the Society of Manufacturing Engineers Achievement Award in 1978 and the National Computer Graphics Association Award for the Advancement of Computer Graphics in 1988. Her last Navy project was the nuclear-powered Seawolf submarine. In 2017, she was inducted into the Arkansas Women's Hall of Fame.
Raye Montague passed away in October 2018 at the age of 83.