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Story by Ann Houston
CareerTech Sponsors High School Pre-Engineering
Engineers: Think globally. Serve the poor. Enable trade. Engineer
a new vehicle. Improve living standards. Design toys or Basic
Utility
Vehicles (BUV). Projects associated to these areas could present
the greatest challenge (and fun) ever had in school!
Westmoore High School student Tim Long sets
a force table and studies the static equilibrium as part of a
unit
on truss calculations. Vector analysis is a critical skill in all
fields of engineering.Tim is
currently studying Principals of Engineering which is the second
course in
a series of five Pre-Engineering courses offered at Moore Norman
Tech Center. |
Yet, according to
research by the National Alliance for Pre-Engineering Programs
the drop out rate in colleges of engineering and engineering
technology programs exceeds 50 percent in the first two years.
Two contributing
factors for this high number are that students don’t
have an understanding of what engineers do and they didn't
take the
right combination of high school courses to prepare them to
succeed in this rigorous course of study, according to Robin
Schott,
innovative initiatives and services manager at the Oklahoma
Department of CareerTech.
Pre-engineering programs now operating in seven
of Oklahoma's technology centers and 57 of their partner high
schools have students in the programs.
To help students who are interested in an engineering
career to be successful, Oklahoma's CareerTech system is now
partnering with the National Alliance for Pre-Engineering Programs/Project
Lead the Way (PTLW). This initiative offers a sequence of pre-engineering
courses.
Project Lead the Way is currently in 41 states
and Washington D.C. with more than 120,000 students enrolled
at 1,000+ school sites. |
More than 400 Oklahoma high school students are enrolled
in pre-engineering programs at Central Tech, Drumright;
Gordon Cooper, Shawnee;
Great Plains, Lawton; Francis Tuttle and Metro Tech,
Oklahoma City; Moore
Norman; and Tulsa Tech.
“The goal is to help students be successful in engineering degreed programs
and postsecondary engineering technology programs and create some
excitement about engineering as a possible career,” Schott said.
These high school students are on the technology
center campuses for three hours each day, and their home schools
for the remainder of their academics.
Students in the pre-engineering programs complete
a sequence of foundational pre-engineering courses. They may choose
an engineering specialty course, such as Computer Integrated Manufacturing
or Civil Engineering, and all take a senior capstone engineering
course. Students are also expected to complete a specificsequence
of math and science courses as part of the pre-engineering program.
“While building the pre-engineering model,
several Oklahoma universities and colleges have offered strong
curriculum recommendations and been involved in the planning and
implementation process,” Schott said.
One of the reasons the CareerTech system is appropriate
to take on engineering academies for high school students are the
connections we have with business and industry across the state,” according
to Malcolm Fowler, director of the Bruce Gray Center which houses
Francis Tuttle’s Pre-Engineering Academy, now completing
its second year.
While partner high schools do an excellent job of teaching
math and science, an additional dimension is added through this program
at technology centers by integrating engineering into math and science
curriculum.
“We are at an advantage because of the nature
of our programs, which are not only for high school students, but
for adults and business and industry. Because of that we have electrical,
mechanical, and chemical engineers on our instructional staff,” Fowler
said. “These engineers, as well as our other instructors, collaborate
in the pre-engineering academy by lending their special expertise
to enrich the pre-engineering instruction." |
Norman High School
students John Brown and Robert Love trouble shoot a mechanical
assembly they created to sort marbles of different colors into
separate bins using photo resistors. They wrote a program using
software similar to the ladder logic used in industry to control
automated systems. |
Moore Norman
Technology Center is completing its first year with a pre-engineering program,
added in response to the growing need for engineering graduates.
Next year, an instructor will be added to meet the expected significant increase
in the program’s enrollment. Focus will also be on the recruitment
of non-traditional students – women and minorities – to the
program, according to Superintendent John Hunter
“Our role as a technology center is to help ensure
engineering students find success in college,” Hunter said. “Prospective
engineering students must understand the differences between the various
engineering tracks,
such as civil, mechanical and electrical. They must also be able to apply math,
science and problem solving skills to the engineering processes.”
The
CareerTech mission and technology centers' primary goal is to prepare
Oklahomans for the workplace, education and in life.
"This goal is a little different," Schott said. "It's to prepare
high school students who have the desire to become an engineer to have success
in
their goal to graduate from a university as an engineer."
“Our student’s success is our real test,” Hunter
said.
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