Overview
For my junior and senior years I spent half of each school day at Summit Technology Academy, a career-focused academy that hosts juniors and seniors from more than 45 high schools. There I completed the specialty courses of the Project Lead the Way (PLTW) engineering curriculum. The half-day schedule let us finish more coursework in less time than a traditional high school schedule.
Junior year
- Computer Integrated Manufacturing (CIM)
- Digital Electronics (DE)
Senior year
- Engineering Capstone (fall semester; normally a full-year course). Included an internship with the city, where we learned how to design a wastewater treatment plant and completed coursework in fluid dynamics.
- Engineering Design and Development (EDD) (spring semester), a custom course offered by STA rather than part of the standard PLTW curriculum. We designed, developed, and engineered a product from concept to fabrication, then presented it to a panel of engineers from firms including Burns & McDonnell, Garmin, Honeywell, and Black & Veatch, as well as city engineers.
My PLTW coursework also included Introduction to Engineering Design (IED), Principles of Engineering (POE), and Civil Engineering and Architecture (CEA).
The Grab and Go
My EDD product was the Grab and Go, a walking cane combined with a grabber: four 3D-printed legs on a motor-driven spring mechanism close around an item to pick it up, then spring back open once it's lifted.
Burns & McDonnell Battle of the Brains · 2nd place
Battle of the Brains is Burns & McDonnell's STEM competition in which students from across the Kansas City area propose a new exhibit for Science City at Union Station. My class at Summit Technology Academy, led by me and one of my classmates, put together our submission, "Wright into the Future," and I developed the entire CAD model of the exhibit.
Our entry took second place, standing out among thousands of entries and winning our school $5,000. 2014 winners announcement
Recognition
STA's programs have been recognized by President Obama, who in a July 2013 speech praised the Missouri Innovation Campus program that STA is part of as a model for other schools.