Redlegs for STEM is a community-outreach effort that puts Field Artillery soldiers, civilian engineers, and STEM-trained volunteers into Lawton-area classrooms — running robotics competitions, maker-space sessions, aerospace camps, and the occasional “why does the cannon work” demonstration. We exist so that kids in southwest Oklahoma see — up close — the technical careers waiting for them.
Lawton sits at the doorstep of Fort Sill — home of the U.S. Army Field Artillery and the Fires Center of Excellence — and produces some of the most technically capable soldiers and engineers in the country. Many of those soldiers grew up in towns much like Lawton and remember exactly what it looked like to be a curious kid without a clear path into a STEM career. Redlegs for STEM closes that distance.
We organize and staff hands-on STEM activities across Lawton-area schools, partner with the Lawton Public School System on year-long programming, and contribute as a member of the Mayor's STEM Consortium — a coalition of educators, military leaders, businesses, and non-profits working to make Lawton–Fort Sill a recognized STEM city in Oklahoma. Our volunteers show up in person. They bring the equipment with them. The kids do the work.
Redlegs for STEM operates on a simple principle: kids learn engineering by building things, not by hearing about them. Every program we run puts students in the hands-on seat — with a working engineer, soldier, or educator alongside.
Soldiers, civilian engineers, and STEM educators visit Lawton-area elementary, middle, and high schools throughout the year. Demonstrations, Q&A, and hands-on activities tied to the science the students are studying.
Volunteer support for FIRST LEGO League and adjacent competitions held at the Tomlinson STEM Arena at Life Ready Center. We coach, judge, mentor, and on a good day, hand out parts when a chassis falls apart twenty minutes before the run.
Joint projects with educators and service members in school maker spaces — building, prototyping, and problem-solving in formats students can take home, build on, and show their families.
Multi-day camps run with university partners. The 2025 STEM Aerospace Camp at FISTA — staffed jointly with Oklahoma State University, Cameron University, and the Fort Sill Redlegs — is the model for what we're scaling next.
[Two–three sentence public-facing bio: where Tim is in Lawton, what brought him into this work, what he is up to now. Full background lives in the partner detail page.]
The name reaches back to the early 19th century. Each branch of the U.S. Army was assigned a facing color — for the Artillery, scarlet. During the Mexican–American War, Ringgold's and Duncan's batteries were issued uniforms with a scarlet stripe down the trouser outseam, and the practice carried through the Civil War. The men who wore those stripes acquired a nickname that stuck: Redlegs. The trouser stripe disappeared in 1902 when high-velocity small arms made bright field uniforms a liability. The name did not.
We use it because the soldiers driving this program are, very literally, Redlegs — Field Artillery, stationed at Fort Sill, the home of the branch. The name carries the right inheritance: a branch identity earned in the field and a tradition of technical discipline against a hard problem. We've borrowed it for a different kind of hard problem — the one in front of every classroom in southwest Oklahoma.
Fort Sill is the U.S. Army Field Artillery's home post and headquarters of the Fires Center of Excellence. The U.S. Army Field Artillery School — founded at Fort Sill in 1911 — trains the soldiers, officers, and Marines responsible for cannon, rocket, and missile fires. Lawton, the city next door, is home to Cameron University, FISTA Innovation Park, and a public-school district whose students will become the next generation of engineers, soldiers, and STEM professionals. Redlegs for STEM is one of the threads stitching the post and the city together around that future.
If you are a teacher who wants Redlegs for STEM in your classroom, a parent whose child would benefit from one of our programs, a Fort Sill soldier who wants to volunteer, or a local business interested in supporting the work, write us. We answer.
redlegs@skoptera.com →