Project Lead the Way: Attracting and motivating future engineers
PLTW is a national pre-engineering program that provides a rigorous and relative STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) curriculum to prepare students for careers in engineering and other technical fields, while promoting teamwork and communication skills. As fewer students choose engineering as a field of study and the engineering pipeline shrinks, PLTW is drawing students in with hands-on activities and learning and helping to attract the future engineers America needs to remain economically competitive.
Since WSU became the Kansas Affiliate for PLTW in 2006, Affiliate Director Larry Whitman has seen interest explode. To date, Kansas has 48 middle schools and 40 high schools that offer the PLTW pre-engineering curriculum. Nationally, more than 350,000 students in 4,000 schools in all 50 states are involved.
As the Kansas Affiliate for PLTW, WSU advises schools, trains teachers to teach PLTW courses, and hosts an annual counselor conference.
Each summer PLTW teachers attend core training at Wichita State. This two-week, rigorous training provides high school and middle school PLTW teachers the training and education that is required to teach all PLTW courses. This summer, the WSU College of Engineering hosted 79 teachers in six different courses, including Principles of Engineering, Introduction to Engineering Design, Aerospace Engineering and Gateway to Technology.
In a PLTW classroom, everything is project-based. Students work in teams, apply their math and science skills to projects, and prepare to take on real-world challenges.
"There's lots of hands-on work. For example, students build a robot that can sort different colors of marbles," said Whitman. "Students love it. The program helps students see math and science have applications that can be interesting."
Students who participate in PLTW are more likely to pursue advanced degrees. Some, in fact, may not have gone into engineering without the PLTW experience. Others try it and learn engineering is not for them. All have a much better idea of what they are getting into.
"It's best they learn this early, before committing to college," said Whitman. "We had one student tell us his life was going down the wrong path. He was making Ds and Fs. He got involved with PLTW and it turned his grades and his life around."