High-Tech High Schools Build Bridge to College
National Society Of Professional Engineers, Engineering Times
April 2003
By Rachel Davis McVearry
Associate Editor
http://www.nspe.org/etweb/14-03feature.asp
When the space shuttle Columbia fell to Earth on the morning of February 1,
four students from Fowler High School in Syracuse, New York, were
particularly devastated. They felt close to the crew of Columbia, partly
because their project “Ants in Space” had traveled into orbit with the
astronauts to provide an educational look at the behavior of ants in zero
gravity. Theirs was the only high school project from the U.S. that had the
distinction of joining the shuttle’s mission.
Fowler has worked hard over the last few years to set itself up as a magnet
school for math, engineering, science, and technology by incorporating
engineering problem solving and design into its curriculum. Syracuse
University took notice. When Syracuse’s engineering school, along with
SpaceHab Inc. and Republican Congressman James Walsh, had an opportunity to
select a high school to design an experiment for the shuttle mission, it
chose Fowler because of its determination to excel.
The attitude toward engineering education at Fowler is catching on at high
schools in many parts of the country, particularly where state initiatives
have placed a high emphasis on technology, or on boosting the number of
qualified engineers. The message regarding engineering education
increasingly seems to be “the earlier, the better.”
“What I see happening across New York and across the country is individual
school districts taking the initiative to focus their efforts, to be magnet
schools for particular areas,” says Edward Bogucz, dean of the College of
Engineering and Computer Science at Syracuse University. “What we see in New
York is a statewide strategic plan for investment in technology. In
Rochester, it’s photonics. In Buffalo, it’s bioinformatics. In Albany, it’s
nanotechnology, and in Long Island, it’s information technology.”
Consequently, more high schools and even middle schools are forming
partnerships with universities and nearby companies to present engineering
as a career option to students at younger ages. Meanwhile, programs like
Operation Link-Up and Project Lead the Way are building bridges between
students’ high school exposure to engineering and college curricula.
Programs such as National Engineers Week, founded by NSPE, and the NSPE-affiliated
Junior Engineering Technical Society continue to enhance the engineering
education of grade school students as well (see article, page 10).
Private benefactors are also funding new so-called “high-tech high schools,”
built to produce the next crop of engineers. Industry also seems more
interested than ever in investing time and money to create a stockpile of
future engineering employees.
It Began in Paterson
Operation Link-Up Executive Director Carey Jenkins started the program in
1988 as a means to encourage students from public schools in Paterson, New
Jersey, which have large populations of underrepresented minorities, to go
to college and study engineering or other fields. Since then, the program
has expanded to other parts of the country.
Bogucz, who was born in Paterson, has made a strong commitment to the
program, which introduces students to colleges and universities, helps them
complete admissions forms and obtain financial aid, and monitors their
progress from ninth grade through college. It also introduces students to
mentors at engineering companies, helps them get a part-time job in an
engineering office or other business, and educates parents on the college
application process.
Antoine Charles became the first Paterson student to graduate from the
engineering program at Syracuse this past May, and he is now working as a
computer engineer for the Navy. Before OLU was founded, only one student
from the Paterson school district had ever been admitted to Syracuse. Since
then, 37 OLU students have enrolled in the university, Bogucz reports.
Project Lead the Way, a national program that introduces a pre-engineering
curriculum to high schools, is also making waves in the engineering
community. The program forms partnerships among public schools,
universities, and industry to increase the number of quality engineers and
engineering technologists in the workforce.
Through PLTW, students learn how to use AutoCAD to design 3D graphics,
complete mechanical and civil engineering design projects, and learn about
digital electronics. In the two-year-old PLTW program at Greater New Bedford
Regional Vocational Technical High School in Massachusetts, for example, the
junior-year students are looking forward to their senior structural and
civil engineering design project. They will consider the engineering factors
involved with building a lighthouse off the coast of Alaska and powering it
through alternative energy sources. Then, they’ll build a 10- to 12-foot
replica of the lighthouse.
A New Kind of Classroom
The school’s PLTW leader, Luis Lopes, organized classroom use of a CNC
lathe, vertical machining center, and a robotic arm that will help simulate
design in a factory setting. Although this is a vocational school, Lopes is
anticipating that 90% of the students will go on to either two-year
technical schools or four-year engineering schools. In fact, a partnership
with the Rochester Institute of Technology allows high school students to
take a college course in digital electronics and obtain college credit if
they pass the final exam.
PLTW has grown from 11 high schools, mostly in upstate New York, in 1997, to
500 schools in 31 states in 2003. PLTW Vice President of Operations Niel Tebbano
says he expects the program to reach 650 schools in 33 states by September.
A New Hampshire law went into effect this year that offers matching funds
from the state to any high school that implements PLTW.
Although state and corporate budgets are suffering with the economic
downturn, Tebbano says that many high schools are finding their own funding
and program resources through industry and private donations. “Industry is
interested in having the labor pool,” he says. “The last thing you want is
what happened in nursing; a lot of schools toned down their nursing
programs, everybody cut back, and now there’s a nursing shortage.”
High-Tech High
Industry participation is a big part of the curriculum at the Gary and Jerri-Ann
Jacobs High Tech High Charter School in San Diego, which claims to be more
like a high-tech workplace than a high school. At High Tech High, students
learn to design and build boats, robotic arms, and other structures in a
team setting. The school was conceived in 1998, when a group of technology
business leaders decided to tackle the shortage of high-tech workers via
K–12 education.
A typical project at High Tech High might include designing and building a
reverse osmosis machine to remove salt from seawater, for example. Students
collaborate on their designs with local engineering firms and establish
mentoring relationships. The coursework is supplemented by performance-based
assessment, state-of-the-art technical facilities for project-based
learning, internships, and partnerships with high-tech companies.
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation gave a total of $1.6 million in grants
to five rural Washington communities in November 2002 to create high schools
modeled after High Tech High. The foundation has funded the creation of
small, personalized, or technology-enriched high schools in other states as
well, including Colorado, Utah, California, and New York.
The first of six high schools in Utah with a special curriculum focusing on
math, science, and engineering will open in fall 2003. Governor Michael
Leavitt (R) is promoting these New Century High Schools, named after
prominent engineers and scientists, as a way to fast-track students into
technical careers. Like other high-tech high schools across the country,
their curriculum will coincide with engineering-related industries that give
the state an economic advantage, such as biotechnology, human genetics,
digital media, medical devices, and Web services.
The Gates Foundation recently granted Utah’s high-tech high school
initiative $3.5 million. That grant was part of a total $40 million that the
foundation gave to 70 schools across the country to support “early-college
high schools.”
Although some schools don’t have as much money to put in, educators and
engineers say that a great reward comes out of watching students go on to
major in engineering in college. “That’s the support of a community that is
encouraging and nurturing young people and showing them the path and saying,
‘You can do this,’<|>“ says Bogucz. “The vitality of the profession relies
on encouraging broader groups of people to pursue engineering as a
profession. When I go to Paterson, I see the tremendous potential of young
people.”
Massachusetts K–12 Plan Rolls Into Its Third Year
Massachusetts has worked to become a leader in recognizing the importance of
engineering and technology education in grades K–12. In December 2000, the
Massachusetts Board of Education was the first to mandate the teaching of
engineering to K–12 students. It created a new curriculum framework to be
used by all schools in the state.
Since then, many schools have started to implement the new curriculum,
according to Ioannis Miaoulis, president of the Boston Museum of Science and
leader of the board’s push for engineering instruction in K–12 classrooms.
Formerly the dean of Tufts University’s School of Engineering, Miaoulis was
also the chair of the Board of Education’s advisory panel.
Miaoulis is working with Hewlett-Packard, Intel, Verizon, Lockheed Martin,
and area universities to plan activities and new exhibits at the museum that
educate K–12 students and the public about engineering. He is developing a
prototype program for science centers across the nation to follow.
“Lots of other states are watching Massachusetts to see what will happen,”
says Miaoulis, although no other state boards have introduced a similar rule
yet. He is optimistic that the curriculum will yield great things,
especially since the programs have the support of the National Science
Foundation, the National Academy of Engineering, and many political leaders.
“We launched the initiative right when the economy started failing,” says
Miaoulis. Despite that, he adds, “Things are going great here.”
Miaoulis recently testified in favor of boosting funding for the Math and
Science Partnership program, which is part of President Bush’s No Child Left
Behind plan to strengthen and reform K–12 education. Congress’s proposed
fiscal year 2003 budget includes an $87.5 million increase in spending for
the Math and Science Partnership program, raising the level to $100 million.
The program focuses on improving math and science education, school-industry
partnerships, and teacher quality.
Student Experiment Sends Ants to Space
When 30 students from Fowler High School in Syracuse, New York, were asked
to design an experiment to ride aboard the space shuttle Columbia, they were
ecstatic. So when the shuttle disintegrated on re-entry from space, they
were crushed. The astronauts were their idols. Their project, “Ants in
Space,” had traveled into orbit with the crew to give the world a glimpse of
the behavior of ants in zero gravity.
The students came up with the idea for the experiment on their own. They
wanted to compare the tunneling speed of ants in space to that of ants on
Earth. The students designed an enclosure for the ants and planned the
experiment, working alongside NASA engineers. After 19 delays of the shuttle
mission, only four students were left at Fowler to work on the project, but
finally, it flew. The students watched their project take off on January 16
in the company of NASA Administrator Sean O’Keefe and Rep. James Walsh (R).
The ants were broadcast online so that anyone in the world could watch them
through a live video feed. Although the students had predicted that the ants
in space would be disoriented and less productive, they actually tunneled
like crazy.
“The kids felt a direct connection to the crew, and suddenly, were in the
national media spotlight,” says Edward Bogucz, dean of the College of
Engineering and Computer Science at Syracuse University. Bogucz selected
Fowler for the experiment and appointed Eric Spina the lead Syracuse faculty
member on the project.
“They handled it with grace and beauty,” Bogucz says.