Mr. Matthew Halfacre, design and engineering teacher at Princeton Middle School, was recently named the New Jersey Middle School “Advisor of the Year” by the Technology Student Association (TSA). Mr. Halfacre serves as one of the advisors for the Technology Student Association club (TSA).

“It is an honor to be awarded the New Jersey Middle School TSA Advisor of the Year award,” said Mr. Halfacre. “The amazing work that the students complete each year and the hard work from my co-advisor Randy Casey, makes the experience of being an advisor very rewarding.”

TSA is a national organization of students competing against each other in STEM-related areas. This year, Princeton Middle School brought 40 students to the New Jersey State TSA conference.

“Our PMS students completed amazing work on the competitions that they were competing in,” said Mr. Halfacre.

Jason Burr, principal of Princeton Middle School, praised Mr. Halfacre. “His dedication has enabled many of our students to achieve much more than they ever thought possible, and we are very proud of the sophisticated technology projects created by students in the club.”

In April, PMS students won multiple awards at the TSA event:

3rd Place in Children's Stories: Milla Petrecca
3rd Place in Construction Challenge: Katy Burns, Julian Bird, and Ethan Robinson
2nd Place in Website Design: Amelia Huang, Aryahi Pimple, Jasmine Shah, Elena Shen and Fei-Fei Wang!
2nd Place in Mechanical Engineering: Temu De Los Santos, Fransisco Vozone, and Daniel Wong
2nd Place in Biotechnology: Angela Cao, Amelia Huang, and Fei-Fei Wang
1st Place in Microcontroller Design: Yochin Chang.