Hazelwood Central, East and West High School have all been officially certified as Project Lead The Way (PLTW) schools, making Hazelwood the first school district in St. Louis County with multiple certified high schools.
Project Lead The Way is a non-profit organizations that promotes engineering courses for middle and high schools students. It forms partnerships with public schools to increase the number and quality of engineering students. A four-year sequence of classes teach children about the scope, rigor and discipline of engineering, such as Digital Electronics, Principles of Engineering, and Aerospace Engineering. Offering these year-long courses at the high school level attracts students and allows them to discover if they want to pursue this as a career path.
Students may receive three hours of college credit for about $200 from the Rochester Institute of Technology for each course they successfully finish. Students could graduate with 12 to 16 hours of engineering credit.
“This is what certification allows you to do,” said Practical Arts Coordinator Dr. Ruth Shafer. “We could not do that if we weren’t certified.”
The certification team visited PLTW classes in each high school, met the principals, and interviewed students, teachers, guidance counselors, and industry mentors. What they saw impressed them enough to ask some of the students to represent the program at the state level.
Principles of Engineering and Introduction to Engineering Design are the foundation courses students take during their freshmen and sophomore years. As juniors, Digital Electronics and Computer Integrated Manufacturing classes are available, allowing them to take a course closer to their career path. In their last year of high school, a capstone course called Engineering Design and Development is offered. In it, students get the chance to develop and plan their own product.
Brian Thompson, the Practical Arts Department Chair at Hazelwood East High School, said the national enrollment trend is mirrored at East. Twenty-eight male and female students are in the program at East now, with 125 students signed up for it next year, he said. Enrollment projections have increased at all three high schools as course offerings expand.
St. Louis Metro statistics echo this trend; 550 students in the St. Louis area are enrolled this year and the enrollment will nearly triple to 1,500 students next year, said Randy Maier, Missouri’s Committee Chair for the program. On May 18, the PLTW Certification Board will be visiting the District to certify each of the high schools’ programs.
Thompson admitted to some doubt when he first read the course descriptions, thinking it was too much work for an incoming freshman to cope. He soon learned reality was different than perception. “It’s phenomenal. The kids get in there and they work. It’s neat to see the type of stuff they produce,” Thompson said.
Project Lead The Way also provides an answer to a growing problem: a critical shortage of engineers and engineering technologists entering the field at a time when technology is changing rapidly.
“How do we bring high schools up-to-speed and get students into a two- or four-year college, and get them interested in being an engineer or a technical engineer?” Maier said. He also works for The Boeing Co. as an engineer and he is a district parent.
One point Maier emphasizes is that these classes are not simply industrial technology or vocational education courses. “It’s more than that,” he said. The classes are also more complicated than reading and working from a textbook, since there is no textbook. Students learn and interact via laptop computers.
Thompson agreed. “It’s a big deal to put this program into your school district because there’s a lot that goes along with it,” Thompson said. For example, the district must buy equipment, computer hardware and software that all meet PLTW standards and all teachers participating in the program must take at least two weeks of training a year or they cannot take part in the project, he said.
Another aspect of Project Lead The Way is that it generates support from local companies that use engineers. Boeing, GKN Aerospace, AmerenUE, and Johnson & Johnson are four of the project’s many corporate supporters. Funding for this initiative comes from multiple sources, the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, the Metropolitan Cooperative Board, and the United States Department of Labor.
“Because PLTW believes that math and science courses are exciting, instructors use a teaching approach which involves students in the same team problem-solving activities used in colleges and in industry. These problem-solving skills can also be applied to other career fields,” Maier said.
These courses are combined with the traditional math and science classes offered in high school. Even for those who do not intend to pursue further formal engineering education will still benefit from the knowledge and logical thought processes that come from taking some of these classes.
For more information on Project Lead The Way, contact Dr. Ruth Shafer, the District’s Practical Arts Coordinator, at (314) 953.5075.
