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Lt. Gen. Thomas P. Bostick, Chief of Engineers and commanding General of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, visited Zama American Middle School to meet and talk with students

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who belong to the Science Technology Engineering and Mathematics program, known as STEM.

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Well, the purpose for the visit to the middle school here is to give an opportunity to the youngsters to learn more about science technology engineering and math.

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What we did, a couple years ago, was to sign a memorandum of understanding with DoDEA that indicated that the Corps of Engineers would work with DoDEA to help volunteer and support engineering classes in the middle schools

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So we're doing that all over the country and the world to help our youngsters learn more about science technology engineering and math.

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Lt. Gen. Bostick explained to the students how he got involved with engineering and addressed the importance of studying in the STEM field.

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He also opened the class to questions.

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The questions that they're asking are very interesting and very educational type questions that demonstrate that they are some of the best of the best students and I'm certain that they're getting a wonderful education overseas.

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I kind of felt like, special because we're one out of nine schools to be interviewed and considering the fact that there are many schools in the world,

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that's a real great honor and I'm glad that he flew all the way from Washington, just to meet us. That was pretty cool.

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It was very educational, he taught me a lot through STEM and how he told us that first you may not know what you want to do in high school and you may not know what you want to do

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later on, in life, but if you follow the path, you'll surely get to where you want to go in STEM and you'll learn a lot from it and build on your education and your learning abilities.

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Before departing, Lt. Gen. Bostick had one more message for the young engineers.

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The main message is just awareness. Our concern is that the country will continue to require young men and women to study in the STEM field.

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And its awareness of that requirement... so, for example, I told them in 2018 we'll need a million more STEM graduates just to meet the requirements that we have in our country.

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And that will take individuals at a very young age keeping the doors open to studying science and engineering and math.

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The STEM program has been taking place at Zama American Middle School for a couple of years with support of volunteers from the Japan Engineer District

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to create an environment that fosters young engineers. Reporting for U.S. Army Garrison Japan, I'm Kevin Krejcarek.