Project Lead the Way engineering excellence in Firestone
students
Part I:
Challenge X
By Mike D’Agruma
WEST AKRON — Dan Spak presides over a unique engineering firm. His project leaders stroll into Stone Engineering at around 2:30 p.m. and leave at about 3:20 — everyday, Mondays through Fridays.
For the engineers, the pay is nonexistent, as is the health plan. The experience, however — much like the three-month vacation package — is to die for.
The engineers are Dugan Bonine, Brigid Fischmann, Tim Miller, Brett Spangler and Uriel Walters. They are seniors at Firestone High School finishing up their fourth year in a unique high school engineering program called Project Lead the Way (PLTW).
PLTW is a four-year extra-curricular program designed to expose students to engineering, prepare them to attend an engineering university or college and instruct them on various engineering disciplines and what engineers in those disciplines actually do. Taught by Spak, the program finds its roots in students recruited in the eighth grade, those who demonstrate the ability to thrive in a national curriculum designed to drive students toward requirements needed to stay afloat in the demanding world of college engineering.
According to Spak, 51 percent of college students who major in engineering drop the program by the end of their second year. He said this nationwide phenomenon is attributed to two things — a lack of preparation, meaning weak math and science skills, and a lack of knowledge, meaning most students attempt to pursue engineering without any idea of what engineering actually is.
PLTW takes care of the second problem by having its students take on real-world challenges while interacting with college professors and students to not only get a better grasp of engineering concepts, but to become more acclimated to a college lifestyle. Spak said a large part of the students’ education and understanding of real-world engineering work comes in the form of real-world engineering design projects. For five of his seniors, a large part of that work has been Challenge X.
Challenge X is a three-year competition series created to challenge university-level engineering students to decrease total cycle emissions and energy consumption in a crossover vehicle while maintaining or exceeding utility and performance. The University of Akron (UA) is one of only 17 collegiate institutions participating in the program. Its project vehicle is a Chevrolet Equinox affectionately named “Joey.”
Spak was looking for a project for his class. UA’s Challenge X team was looking for a storage unit designed to hold the 156 ultracapacitors that help power Joey. It’s the long and short of how the storage unit design was “outsourced” to Stone Engineering.
Stone Engineering came about when the students began contacting companies for material specifications and costs, researching new concepts and holding design meetings (and occasionally arguments) — doing everything just like a real engineering firm. Well, at least one without an identity. The moniker “Stone Engineering” was created to give them a sense of legitimacy — both to themselves and the professional contacts with whom they dealt.
Initially, the students’ involvement with Challenge X began when they were tasked with simply solving a problem on paper. When asked to give a 30-minute presentation to Challenge X team leaders and faculty advisers, the task changed. Challenge X was impressed enough to ask the students to build their design, which ended up being chosen over one belonging to a UA senior engineering class.
After two years, a second design model and lots of interaction with UA, Stone Engineering’s completed unit sits in the back of their classroom as the students work and prepare for the team’s final presentation. The box-like object may not look like much, but it holds quite a bit. While primarily designed to hold 156 ultracapacitors, it holds something not seen by the naked eye, something that can’t be engineered in the traditional sense. It holds 24 months worth of excitement, frustration, confusion, determination and understanding.
At Stone Engineering, the sun is setting on both a two-year project and high school careers. The students will leave Stone Engineering in June for UA — ready to take sure-footed baby steps in their engineering careers supported by enhanced problem-solving capabilities, and most importantly, more confidence. As PLTW “guinea pigs” (as Spangler calls himself and his fellow seniors), they leave having blazed the trail for a program that initially started with 30 students in 2003, has 83 today and is expected to have anywhere between 100 and 120 in 2008.
For Spak, watching his first senior engineers prepare to leave is bittersweet. Though he spent 20 years in the corporate sector watching many engineers come and go, his five Challenge X students are — to say the least — different.
“As a parent, the two most important things that you can ever give a child, in my opinion, are roots and wings,” Spak said. “I think I’ve done the wings with them. And I know they’re eager to try them out — I’m just not so eager to do without them.”
[Editor’s
note: For
Part II of the story, see next week’s issue of
the West Side Leader.]
The Firestone High School Project Lead the Way Challenge X team includes, from left, Dugan Bonine, Brigid Fischmann, Tim Miller, Brett Spangler and Uriel Walters. They are shown with their ultracapacitor storage unit design (center) and teacher Dan Spak (far right). Photo: Mike D’Agruma
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