Corona among schools to launch innovative pre-college program for engineering hopefuls

Corona del Sol’s Katie Chance will join the elite ranks of science teachers from 20 Arizona high schools who are helping students try out their engineering skills before entering college, thanks to a successful University of Arizona academic program.

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Starting in 2013, Corona will join the list of schools offering the same course, for which state universities—and many community colleges—give students three hours credit.

The UA College of Engineering introductory class, Engineering 102, is being offered at schools across Maricopa County and other parts of the state to give math- and science-savvy students hands-on experience before they fully commit to a university engineering program.

The program, ENGR 102 HS, is based on the Engineering 102 class that freshman engineering students take at UA.

Even though the course involves voluntary participation in events with sports-sounding names like Solar Oven Throw Down, it’s not all fun and games. Students are required to design projects, give presentations and write reports, just like the college course.

Students who might never consider investing the time and money to explore engineering as college freshmen can sample the discipline in a low-risk environment, while those who want to be engineers can take a real engineering class as a final test of their career decision, said Engineering Associate Dean for Academic Affairs Jim Baygents.

The high school version of the class can give students a more in-depth and supported experience than the college-level course, said Baygents.

He noted that high school students often take the class from a teacher they know, and mostly work on projects under close supervision in class, whereas the professor is new to most of the college freshmen and they build projects with teammates outside of class.

Most 102 projects focus on engineering design through calculations, simulations, building and testing. Projects involving rocketry, radio astronomy and solar ovens are typically offered in ENGR 102 HS courses.

Comments

  1. A seuprb analysis that drills down to some core issues that we only were able to touch on in The Inconvenient Truth Behind Waiting for Superman. If we do a follow-up we hope to get into these issues with the help of thoughtful teachers like Liz Hoelzle.

    • computer science is a lot of prgirammong. computer engineering is prgirammong plus the hardware aspect of it all. In short, computer engineering is like a combined electrical engineering and computer science program. You can be very marketable as long as you do well in school, get internships, and know a lot about the field. It is also a cutthroat field to get into because there are already tons of computer engineers out there who are already the best. If you want to land a high paying entry level job, you gotta be good at it. The government hires a lot of computer engineers. If you are a US citizen and can get a security clearance (secret or top secret), this will probably land you the highest salary.

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