SDSU Helps Forge New Generation of Much-Needed Engineers
Teachers Participate in Project Lead the Way Training June 26-30 and July 9-21
Dozens of middle and high school teachers from around San Diego County and around the country are converging on San Diego State University this summer to learn ways to attract more students to the understaffed yet vital engineering field.
The first of these teacher-training sessions is under way through June 30, and a second takes place July 9-21. They are sponsored by Project Lead the Way, a national not-for-profit organization dedicated to expanding pre-engineering curricula in middle and high schools. SDSU is California’s only Project Lead the Way teacher training center.
Teachers from Sweetwater Union High School District, San Dieguito School District and San Diego Unified School District along with colleagues from as far away as Florida, Minnesota, and Texas, will learn new, hands-on engineering curriculum to use in their classrooms that are designed to expose and excite students earlier.
The educators will be trained on how to teach everything from robotics to civil engineering and architecture to middle and high school students. Projects include using a robotics kit to build a marble sorter, and making and testing a ping-pong ball launcher.
“Most of the time parents or high school counselors have turned students on to engineering,” said Bruce Westermo, director of SDSU’s Project Lead the Way program and assistant dean for SDSU’s College of Engineering. “But with Project Lead the Way, students learn about the industry much earlier, significantly improving their success later on.”
Westermo said there are not enough students studying engineering to fill the number of jobs that will become available over the next several years. To make matters worse he said, currently an average of only 50 percent of students who go into a university engineering program complete their degree.
“That is a terrible success rate,” he said. “And it’s mainly because the material is so new to them. Very few students have been exposed to any of the principles of engineering.”
Project Lead the Way has tracked students at the Rochester Institute of Technology who had learned engineering curriculum from Project Lead the Way-trained teachers in middle school and high school. Of those students, 85 percent who entered the engineering program graduated with an engineering degree. Program evaluations also show Project Lead the Way students do better than their peers in their middle and high school math, science and reading courses.
Over the last two summers SDSU’s Project Lead the Way has trained more than 100 teachers. This summer Westermo expects more than 60 teachers to complete the training.
Kearny High Educational Complex teacher Omar Garcia was trained by Project Lead the Way and is among the instructors helping other teachers at SDSU this summer. He said students who take his civil engineering and architecture class see the meaning of their education in the long term.
“Before I started teaching Project Lead the Way classes, my students didn’t see the relationship between real life and school,” said Garcia. “Now, they are connecting their math, science, English and history classes with engineering, and they see how all of them are intertwined and they understand. They say, ‘This is something that I can do as a career.’”
Not only are the students making the connection, but teachers are enjoying seeing them succeed.
“My classes are full and it’s exciting to see students really enjoy learning,” Garcia said. “One of my graduating seniors will be going to the University of Southern California for architecture, and that is what it’s all about.”
SDSU’s Project Lead the Way program is one of several initiatives supported by the QUALCOMM Institute for Innovation and Educational Success. The QUALCOMM Institute for Innovation and Educational Success at SDSU was established in 2004 through a $14.5 million gift from QUALCOMM. Its primary objective is to identify and address major issues critical to the long-term prosperity of the San Diego region. For more information on SDSU’s Project Lead the Way program, visit www.engineering.sdsu.edu/PLTW/.
Project Lead the Way seeks to create dynamic partnerships with our nation’s schools to prepare an increasing and more diverse group of students to be successful in engineering and engineering technology programs. Its curriculum is taught in more than 1,500 schools in 47 states, Canada and the United Kingdom. Learn more at www.pltw.org.
