The first assignment of the year: Build the tallest structure possible that can support a marshmallow with 25 uncooked spaghetti strands, tape and string. Students in Principles of Engineering, the new elective taught in first period by teacher Audrey Warmuth and in sixth period by teacher Matt Welander and located in the old woodshop room, were immediately drawn into the course with this first fun exercise.

Introduced by Project Lead the Way (PLTW) last year, Principles of Engineering is an extension of the freshman and sophomore elective Introduction to Engineering Design and instructs students in the science of building functional engineering tools, such as pulley systems and mechanical claws. Junior Eoghan Walsh, who wanted to try something new, feels that it is a well-paced, hands-on class.

“I like how we’ve gotten to building objects and it’s only the second week,” Walsh said.

Even though the two engineering courses are related, students can take Principles of Engineering without having taken Introduction to Engineering Design. The two classes share general similarities, but differ in the type of engineering that students are able to do.

“The course work in [Principles of Engineering] is [a] little more advanced, but it’s very different from the first-year class,” Welander said. “The first-class deals with a lot of designing using computer software and the second year class is more hands-on building.”

So far, the engineering electives have been a huge hit, causing all of the offered periods — one period for Intro to Engineering Design and two periods for Principles of Engineering — to be full and students to be put on the wait-list. PLTW and the high school’s plan for the future is to make engineering a four-elective program, adding one class in 2015 and another in 2016. Because Saratoga is a relatively small school, and it is difficult  to add another elective to the curriculum, the new classes will be added depending on teacher availability and student interest.

“We’re thinking of maybe [adding] aeronautical engineering, biomedical engineering, or digital electronics,” Warmuth said.

Even though it is only the beginning of the year, senior Andre Baluni already knows this is one of his favorite classes.

“I really like working with all the tools we use in class. Right now, we’re building slopes and pulleys,” Baluni said.

Students in the Principles of Engineering class will be provided with their own VEX robotics kit, in-class laptops and scientific notebooks, which they keep in the classroom lockers.

“Second semester we will be using the VEX robotics kits to build robots and other things to certain design specifications to ultimately automate a process, and we will be programming for it all,” Warmuth said.

Unlike most classes, these engineering courses do not have to follow any state standards, so they can take any pace that benefits the students the most. This allows students to linger in the sections that interest them, and move on in the sections that they easily understand.

This class has opened up interest for many students in the math and science, if not in engineering itself. Because of the course, Walsh is considering engineering as a possible career in the future.

“The course is really interesting,” Walsh said. “It’s a new experience that I can learn a lot from.”