Beginning Engineering

A few years ago I attended a meeting that was facilitated by our local State Representative. The subject was education and the attendees included Supervisors and others from our three school districts in the Coachella Valley. The topic that captured my attention was the idea of bringing people with business experience into the school systems as Career Technical Educators. I believed this to be a great idea, and I signed up. Signing-up means successfully taking a series of education courses and then applying to the State of California for a “Career Technical Education” certificate.

I initially tried to obtain the certificate with a Project Management designation because this is the basis of most of my work experience. While I took the education courses, I also developed course work and published a small book, Beginning Project Management, which would be suitable for interested High Schoolers. I believe that a high school graduate who was familiar with the fundamentals of Project Management as well as the Microsoft Suite (Word, Excel, Powerpoint, and MS Project) could get an entry level job with companies in a large variety of industries. However, at this time California does not recognize Project Management as career path in spite of huge number of job openings for Project Managers in IT, Engineering, Construction, Health Care, Finance and many others. Note, however, that knowledge of Project Management methodology and practice are required by the California CTE Standards, .

A CTE Certificate with a Project Management designation was a non-starter. With a lot of help I was able to get a CTE Certificate with an Engineering designation only to find that there are very few opportunities to teach engineering at the high school level. Never the less, I have developed course plan for beginning engineering. The idea for the course is that the foundational learning for a potential engineer comes from the Sciences and Mathematics. What would be helpful for the student is exposure to the 127 Engineering Sub-disciplines, the engineering and project management processes and basic engineering economics. Knowledge of these would give the student better direction for a career paths and possibly a leg up for College Activity.

The course plan is posted on this site as Beginning Engineering Course. I would appreciate thoughtful comment regarding the plan and if you have had similar experiences.

Beginning Engineering Course Plan 3

California STEM Standards (ST-CCTC_PerformanceElements)