National certification awarded to MCCTC

Staff report

CANFIELD

Walter Baber and Valerie Sullivan from Mahoning County Career and Technical Center accepted a plaque proclaiming national certification from Project Lead the Way.

PLTW offers students either a pre-engineering or a biomedical sciences track in an effort to help schools increase the number and quality of engineers and biomedical science students graduating from colleges and universities in the United States.

To achieve national certification, a PLTW school must adhere to strict requirements, including teaching the PLTW curriculum, administering the exams provided, working with local business and industry, offering students a way to take all of the basic courses offered and providing them a clear pathway into post-secondary education.

Since their school has achieved certified status, MCCTC pre-engineering students may take their high-school credit earned in PLTW and receive credit at several national PLTW affiliate colleges and universities such as Purdue, Penn State and Rochester Institute of Technology.

Several Ohio colleges and universities already have worked out or are currently working out details that will allow pre-engineering students to enter a large number of Ohio colleges with college credit, depending on the program and the requirements of the specific college.

Students in the biomedical science track also will have the same opportunity.

Dave Dickinson, professor of welding engineering at Ohio State University and PLTW executive council member, is impressed with the PLTW pre-engineering program and with the caliber of students in PLTW classes across the state.

“These ninth- and 10th-graders are every bit as mature and bright as most of the college freshmen I see,” he said. “I’d be happy to see any or all of them come to OSU.”

Another executive council member, Dave Powell, director of plant engineering and environmental performance at American Electric Power, stresses the importance of the PLTW students’ contribution to Ohio’s future.

“This country will have over a million jobs in engineering opening up in the next few years as people retire,” he said. “We need new engineers.”

The PLTW program, aimed at increasing the number of high-school students interested in pursuing engineering or biomedical careers in college, has been adopted by 202 high schools, career centers and middle schools all over the state.

Kathy Sommers of the Ohio Department of Education, Project Lead the Way’s state leader for Ohio, sees the program as the best answer to Ohio’s workforce and employment issues.

“With 100 percent of the baby-boomer population due to retire over the next 10 to 15 years, we are going to need all the engineers and trained biomedical people we can get,” Sommers said. “Project Lead the Way can help to fill that gap. We see almost unlimited potential for growth in our state.”