Late last year, a video came across my LinkedIn feed. It was a ribbon cutting ceremony at Jefferson County Public School's Western STEM Magnet High School, celebrating their newly built eSports Arena and multimedia learning space:
I was blown away by what I saw, and reached out to Western's Principal Melanie Weaver and Project Manager Greg Fehr about the possibility of facilitating a visit for OVEC educators (and others!) to see the space in person. Melanie and Greg enthusiastically accepted, and on February 13, our caravan arrived!
Before discussing the eSports arena, I'll share some school demographics for Western. This is Western's first school year as a district-wide magnet program, with four learning pathways: Culinary Science, Public Health Discoveries (Data Science), Computer Science, and - as the most relevant pathway tying into their arena - Digital Design and Gaming Development. Western currently has over 400 students. As a sign of their diverse student population, their current freshmen class comes from 22 JCPS middle schools and represent 13 zip codes.
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| Melanie Weaver, Western's Principal |
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| Greg Fehr, Western's Project Manager |
At first, Western's arena project faced an uphill battle, as the school tirelessly problem-solved how to renovate an existing area with working tech at an agreed budget. To share one of several challenges along the way, they had to figure out how to consistently provide air conditioning to the space so that its high performing computers didn't overheat. Vendors such as Creative-Image Technologies and Extron helped Western manifest their vision. Finally, by December 2024, it was ready for students.
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| Computer and tech specs, courtesy of Halston Turner with C-it. |
The arena ended up at a whopping 4300 square feet, with a "shoutcast station," a competition area, a separate production studio room, and two instructional spaces that can serve multiple classes simultaneously. Not only is Western's eSports arena easily the biggest in a Kentucky K-16 school, it would likely rival the size of many across the nation. Greg mentions one of the design intentions was to have a "wow" factor for students, and it succeeds!
Besides all of the amazing technology, we can't forget about the learners! We were able to interact with some students during their Game Design and Development class, and were impressed by their engagement and their level of rigorous work.
Despite creating such an incredible learning and competition space, Western is not resting on any laurels. They expect to grow to 1000 students within the next few years, and soon want to have eSports tournaments both within JCPS and between other districts in the state. Community partners like Louisville Geek are coming in to work with students. And the seniors at Western don't have to hang up their video game controllers when they graduate. One of the day's guests was Mitch Greenwell, Director of eSports & Sports Administration Professor at Bellarmine University, and a consultant for the arena project. Mitch reminded us that Bellarmine has an eSports Management Minor, and offers scholarships for players, as many colleges now do across the nation.
Overall, the visitors and I had all of our expectations surpassed, and left inspired. Here's to more schools innovatively transforming their learning spaces like Western STEM Magnet!
Special thanks to Melanie Weaver and Greg Fehr for hosting our visit, to Greg for providing many of the background details on Western and their arena project, and for Western's student ambassadors for helping our visitors around the building.
Note: eSports is also often stylized as "e-sports" and "Esports" (as you can see even in this post); my choice was arbitrary, but I wanted to be consistent in my wording for this blog entry.
