Professors Help High School, UW Center Students Envision Engineering Careers

Thousands of high school graduates each year see engineering as an attractive way to apply their math and science talents. Yet few see the diversity of career choices ahead of them.

Two engineering professors at UW–Madison want to give students an earlier picture of engineering careers through partnerships with state high schools and UW Center campuses. Nuclear engineers James Blanchard and Michael Corradini are entering the third year of grants from the UW System to help Wisconsin high schools and center campuses expand their curriculum in engineering.

This spring, the duo received $90,000 to develop World Wide Web-based instructional materials and videos that will help visualize engineering careers.

Blanchard says high schools and UW centers are limited in their ability to teach engineering. Only a select few state high schools, and three of the state’s 13 centers, have a dedicated faculty position in engineering. And courses usually provide only a cursory introduction to the field, he says.

“We want our students to be as prepared as possible when they arrive here,” Blanchard says. “We will be exposing them to academic departments they probably didn’t know existed.”

With last year’s grant, they videotaped a series of accessible, 20-minute talks from faculty in different engineering disciplines, including mechanical, chemical, electrical, materials science, astronautics, nuclear and civil engineering. This year, they will add footage from industry, including road construction and environmental remediation projects, and possibly a trip to the Cray Computer plant in Chippewa Falls, Wis.

Web-based materials are likely to include basic recipes for hands-on engineering projects. One example is a popular project called “dissections,” where a class meticulously takes apart a machine to better understand its design principles.

The most active high school linkage has been with Madison West, which offers a great course in engineering design, Blanchard says. The UW–Madison team is also working closely with the UW-Rock County and UW-Waukesha centers, which have developed engineering programs.

As a model for teaching applied engineering, Blanchard says they are using the innovative Engineering Professional Development 160 course offered to first-year UW–Madison engineers. Created three years ago, the course puts teams of students to work on semester-long product design projects, from concept to blueprint to production.

Blanchard says the web and video materials will form a starting point for other high schools and centers to begin teaching engineering. The ultimate goal, he says, is preparing students to make better career choices at UW–Madison.