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Engineering Program Builds Bridges to Careers
on June 2, 2009
University High School in West Los Angeles gives students a chance to build robots or design bridges in a program that aims to push more women, blacks and Latinos into engineering professions, the LA Times reports.
The high school's new Academy of Engineering is one of 13 such academies across the country to open last fall under a national grant program. The premise behind the program is that students must get actively engaged in math and science education if the nation wants to keep pace in the world of technology. The network will expand to 110 schools nationally by 2012.
Women accounted for 18 percent of engineering bachelor's degrees in the nation in 2006-07, according to the American Society for Engineering Education. African-Americans and Latinos of both sexes accounted for a total of 11 percent.
The idea is that hands-on activities will motivate students in these groups to pursue jobs in engineering fields and generally bump up the number of American engineers.
"You're looking for students who have kind of been passed over, you're looking for a learning modality that's hands-on and project-based," said Max Rock, the head of the academy. "I think there's a pretty equal group of guys and girls who learn that way — they don't really learn something unless they get their hands on it."
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