St. Michael-Albertville Schools ‘Lead the Way’ to Increasing Engineering Opportunities

 With a national shortage of engineers, Wisconsin’s Kern Family Foundation took a step toward erasing that shortage by creating Project Lead the Way, a nationally renowned program that gives middle and high school students additional engineering opportunities. St. Michael-Albertville is one of the only schools in the local area to offer the program, which has grown each year since the district incorportaed the program three years ago.

The Kern Foundation provided a grant for start-up costs associated with getting Project Lead the Way classes in schools, which includes a two-week ‘boot camp’ of intensive training for each course offered through PLTW.

“The costs may have been prohibitive if not for this grant,” said Roger Bovee, the district’s technology/curriculum integration coordinator.Currently there are classes available at both the middle and high schools: Des

ign and modeling and automation and robotics at the middle school level, and four classes at the high school: intro to engineering design (ninth grade), principles of engineering (10th) and digital electronics and computer integrated manufacturing (beyond).

Introduction to engineering design, the district’s first Project Lead the Way class, began in 2007 and has had anywhere from 42 to 98 students take the course in the past four years. In total, 189 students are currently registered for a Project Lead the Way class for next school year at the high school level alone.

The district is also looking into some possible growth areas: aviation/aerospace engineering or architecture 1 – civil engineering and design. In addition, they are pushing to get a capstone class at the Wright Technical Center to give more students in the area a chance to participate in this type of class, as well as working toward an ambitious goal of getting just as many females as males in the program. Currently there are 15 females taking part in the program, up from only two out of 77 the year before.

Students are eligible to receive three college credits for each Project Lead the Way class they take if they can pass the exam at the end of the year, which about half of STMA students do.

“A lot of students take a class [who are] interested in engineering but don’t really know what it’s all about,” said Kris Rue, the high school’s main Project Lead the Way instructor. “They can feel out this career path, whereas before they may have had to go to college, waste those credits … and then realize ‘I don’t like this stuff.’ It’s a career exploration that they didn’t really have before.”

Rue said each of the four offered courses is geared towards a different area of the engineering field, so students can feel out which type might suit them the best. This can be a big benefit for students looking into college options, including the three students Patch spoke with about the program.

Seniors Jon Steffl, Dallin Colgrove and Vicki Bourget have taken either all available PLTW courses or nearly all, and this trio of students felt their experiences in Project Lead the Way classes reinforced their career aspirations. While both Colgrove and Bourget said the courses helped lead them to find their engineering niche (both settled on computer engineering), Steffl said he’s still uncertain about which engineering track to pursue but is definitely more confident in his choice to become an engineer after taking these classes.

“We’ve gotten a feel for a whole bunch of different categories of engineering,” Steffle said.

 The three agreed that the designing process they went through and knowledge of basic skills has been a boon for helping them get a leg up on their college education. Especially interesting projects for them included designing and creating their own plastic knickknacks or making ballistic cannons using ping pong balls, using math to figure out what angle to shoot it at to make the balls into a basket.

Besides the Kern Foundation, Bovee said several other businesses have helped breathe life into the program, including many local companies and area engineers, who have either volunteered to come in and talk to students about career possibilities in engineering fields and local businesses who have given the district advice or donated supplies to the program. Three such companies are Medtronic, Graco, Mold-Tech and Metro Mold.

STMA is the only school out of the area’s immediate neighbors in the Elk River, Monticello or Buffalo school districts to offer this Project Lead the Way, and district officials expressed their hope that the program will help recruit more students via open enrollment.

“We’re proud of the program and proud of the recognition we get from Project Lead the Way,” Bovee said, saying PLTW state coordinator, Jim Mecklenburg, oftens mentions St. Michael-Albertville as a model program in the state. “We’re proud of the strength of our industrial tech program at STMA and the addition that Project Leads the Way provides us.”