I'm not one of those people who can say that I have wanted to be an astronaut, or a doctor, or really anything from a young age, I can honestly say that I had no idea which direction my life would go.
In ninth grade, there was a man who came to our school and talked about engineering. He was sent to get kids excited about math and science and encourage us to apply for a program called Project Lead the Way (PLTW). Project Lead the Way classes are "hands-on, based in real-world experience, and fun for students and teachers."
I applied for the program because as a freshman, getting to work with other students designing things and then building them sounded like the hands-on learning I knew I could grow from. They specifically encouraged girls to apply because there were only a few in the program. I believe this opened opportunities for me. There were only 5 students accepted from each participating junior high school, and not only was I one of them, I was the only girl.
The program consisted of classes that would be part of my normal school schedule, but the classes were held off campus.
I was part of PLTW for two years before moving to a state that didn't offer it. I took such classes as: Introduction to Engineering Design, Principles of Engineering, and concurrent physics courses taught at PLTW. Had I continued through the program all four years of high school I could have taken classes like Digital Electronics, and specialized courses in my desired field of engineering.
At the time I didn't think about how many doors that this program would open for me, I only thought of how fun it was to design things. We designed and tested balsa bridges, we made sumo-bots and competed with classmates, designed water rocket cars, and developed all our designs in AutoDesk Inventor 8 3D-Modeling software. When I began taking college level engineering courses my junior year of high school, my engineering teachers looked at my portfolio work compiled from PLTW and were astonished at the level the classes were taught. They used my portfolio to get me college credit for every class they believed I should recieve credit for, and from 3 PLTW courses, I recieved credit for 4 college level classes. Amazing!
I am such a strong advocate for getting people involved in science, math and technology as early as possible. That is why I started this blog. I will be writing about all the programs I possibly can in hopes that the readers can pass information onto your children, your nieces and nephews, or even yourselves and get involved.
Project Lead the Way is offered throughout many states including Indiana, Ohio, and Utah.
Below I have posted a link to Project Lead the Way's main website and hope that if you know someone that is interested, you browse the information and check to see if PLTW is available in a school in your area!
http://www.pltw.org/
Project Lead the Way was only the beginning. I came out of the program knowing that engineering was for me, but not yet exactly what type of engineering I had the most interest in. That came later...
