Mentors Needed for Engineering Design and Development Students

Thu, 10/05/2023 - 9:38pm

Students enrolled in Engineering Design and Development (EDD) are in search of mentors to assist them in developing solutions to their final projects. EDD is the capstone course of the nationally acclaimed Project Lead the Way pre-engineering academy. These students take five classes for the purpose of receiving three undergraduate engineering credits as a result of passing the end-of-course assessments. The curriculum is extremely rigorous and exemplifies what a STEM program should do to engage students in engineering. 

The EDD class requires students to develop a product or system from its formative stages of research and development to a testable prototype and then defend their idea before a patent-style review board of engineering and marketing experts. The ten students in the class this year are divided into three teams attempting to solve the problems of Excessive Caffeine Pollution, Bacteria on Phones, and Low-Cost Sustainable packaging. 

Ideally, mentors should be practicing or retired engineers. Your field of expertise does not matter as we mainly ask you to guide students through the process of how to solve their problem and develop their solution. We also hope to leverage your network of engineers with whom the students can make contact. You can meet face-to-face or with your mentees virtually via Google Meet during school hours. All we ask is a commitment of once a week for 15-20 minutes. 

If interested in mentoring these talented burgeoning engineers, or if you would like more information about the program, please contact Eric Cullings at eric_cullings@hcpss.org. Thank you.