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Initiative Promotes Technical Education in ; Project Lead the Way Seeks More Engineering Grads

Posted on: Friday, 9 December 2005, 21:00 CST

By Pamela Ferris-Olson For the Dayton Daily News

In January, Ridgeville Christian High School will be involved in a battle. The Clearcreek Twp. students will try to flip their competition over or out of the ring.

At Centerville High School, a push is on to get female students to attend clubs and summer camps that promote what has for a long time been the purview of the opposite sex.

Similar initiatives are taking place in Kettering and Dayton. The impetus for these programs stems from international news that puts the United States at the bottom of a list of countries for performance in math and science.

Project Lead the Way is a national initiative aimed at creating a dynamic partnership between schools, the private sector and institutions of higher learning. The goal is to increase the number and quality of engineers graduating from the nation's education system.

Sinclair Community College serves as the PLTW resource center and training facility in Ohio.

"We run workshops to train teachers, maintain the local Web site and list server, field questions, help new programs get established, visit existing programs to monitor quality, collect data and work closely with both local industry and university partners to further establish PLTW as a force in Ohio workforce development," said Deb Lukjanovs, Ohio PLTW coordinator.

"Last year, we trained over 50 teachers in our Summer Training Institute, and obtained a $2 million line item in the Ohio budget to continue the grant funding for Ohio schools that want to take part in PLTW."

Dayton Public Schools' engineering technology instructor James Rowland said that enrollment at Patterson and Dunbar high schools' PLTW program is 15 percent female and 75 percent minorities.

"We place approximately 80 percent of our students in post secondary opportunities, with a high percent coming to Sinclair Community College. My greatest desire is to provide access to this great opportunity to every student in the Dayton Public Schools. We are currently working on plans to include Colonel White students," Rowland said.

Dayton's PLTW program is taught on the Sinclair campus.

Centerville's program is open to juniors and seniors. Students spend almost two hours each day in classes such as principles of engineering, digital electronics and computer integrated manufacturing.

"The engineering technology program is intended for anyone who has an interest in pursuing an engineering or engineering technology college degree, however, it is a very rigorous program with certain math and science prerequisites," Centerville instructor of engineering technology Dan Stacey said.

Ridgeville Christian is the only Christian school in Ohio to offer PLTW. This year Ridgeville began a middle school version of PLTW. It is designed to boost enrollment in the high school program.

"I like the fact that PLTW courses provide a balance between high rigor and high relevance. It's not a program in which students simply make things. Every project requires students to apply math and science principles in order to solve real world engineering problems," said Peter Leeper, head of Ridgeville Christian's math and engineering departments.

"Students love the projects and being able to use high-tech equipment."

Leeper can name a number of examples that illustrate the success of the program at his school. One is senior Justin Potter who after taking an introduction to engineer design course decided to major in mechanical engineering.

Leeper said that Potter plans to enroll in a dual program at Sinclair and the University of Dayton.

"United States industry needs more than one million engineers and technical workers. There are nowhere near enough engineering majors to meet this demand,"

Source: Dayton Daily News

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