County schools to add engineering courses
Program to be paid for with grant from University of Alabama Huntsville, NASA
By Benjamin Bullard
The Cullman Times
Cullman County students will be able to take some basic engineering courses this fall, a move that could be the first step toward eventually adding a full engineering academy in the years to come.
The system has received a grant from the University of Alabama Huntsville, in conjunction with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), to offer engineering lessons in some physics classes beginning next school year.
“The UAH professor will come in once a week and teach engineering in the local physics classes,” Superintendent Billy Coleman said. “We’re definitely going to be a part of that, and the challenge right now is getting the logistics worked out. We feel like most of our schools are really interested, and we want to give all of them a chance to be involved.”
School board member Jason Speegle, who works as an engineer at Mesco Building Solutions, said he hopes the grant will help students realize the numerous job opportunities in the field.
“As an engineer myself, having come through school, a lot of students don’t even know what engineers do,” he said. “Any chance to offer this for the kids is just really exciting.”
The NASA tie-in brings with it a contest to have a student engineering project — one will be selected nationwide — included on a future spacecraft.
“That’s at no cost for our system, and it’s something really neat we can offer for our students,” Coleman said. “The chance to have something included with NASA, though I’m sure there will be some stiff competition, is just really positive.”
In addition to the UAH project, the county school system is also one of 15 schools vying for a separate engineering grant from the STEM academy.
“This is a three-year program that trains teachers in the system to implement engineering into their course of study in math and science, and they would take some time to do professional development with those teachers,” Coleman said. “With our demographics, and the interest we’ve shown in the UAH grant, we could be a powerful candidate to be chosen. Should we be fortunate enough, we should find out more about that in December or January.”
A recent U.S. Department of Labor report on the fastest growing occupations included five different engineering entries, with biomedical engineering at the top of the list. It’s projections like this, Coleman said, that have encouraged local educators to expand into engineering course work.
“We have found out there are going to be an awful lot of engineering jobs coming up in the years ahead,” he said. “Introducing engineering to our students should reach many of them, and hopefully encourage them to go into this field. That’s our motivation.”
In the years to come, these recent grants might even lay the groundwork for a full engineering academy in the county school system —possibly hosted at the Cullman Area Career Center campus in Vinemont.
“Maybe in the future, by the time these grants are going, we’ll even be able to offer engineering classes at a central location for even more of our students,” Coleman said.
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