Engineering in Design and Development completes four-year program

Engineering in Design and Development (EDD) will be introduced next year as a new elective for aspiring engineers, completing the four-year engineering program. The class will be project-based with hands-on learning, exposing students to real-world experience.

EDD will be the highest level engineering class out of the other three engineering classes: Introduction to Engineering Design, Principles of Engineering and Digital Electronics. As it challenges students to use the skills and knowledge they learned in the previous engineering courses, EDD will only be available to students who have taken at least two of them. Other engineering courses do not need previous engineering experience.

Although the curriculum for EDD has not been set yet, engineering and math teacher Audrey Warmuth envisions the first semester to have a series of design challenges and builds that will “develop technical skills” along with teamwork, cooperation and delegation of responsibility. For the second semester, she hopes to let the students build off of their own designs.

There are currently two engineering teachers, Matt Welander and Warmuth. But it has not yet been decided who will teach the class.

Some key challenges in the new engineering class will be in getting the correct software and hardware. Warmuth said “storing” and “distributing” materials such as tools and building necessary for projects will also be a problem.

According to Warmuth, there will also be the standard problems of creating a new class. This includes what goals the students to achieve, the timing of each lesson and the difficulties the class will face.

“It is nearly impossible to know how to achieve the best results [for a class] until [it has been] taught for several years,” Warmuth said.