From making earrings to building tables, engineering students, both old and new, are working on their newest projects for the year. Some students might be still learning the basics of engineering, but everyone works together.

“My favorite thing about taking the class is that the majority of learning you do is on you, so your teacher acts less as a teacher, more as a facilitator,” Nick Brown (12) said. “He’ll give you a project and you just have to go do it.”

Engineering teacher Caleb Watson has spent most of his in the engineering field. Mr. Watson knew that he wanted to work on engineering and provide other people with opportunities. His teaching style however, challenges students to work independently and learn from their mistakes.

“My first major in college was actually engineering. I loved going through the engineering design process as a whole,” Mr. Watson said. “I knew that I could use my background in the engineering classes and help students understand the process. We didn’t have anything when I went here, so I wanted to make sure that the upcoming students had that opportunity to learn.”

Besides learning how to create, maintain, and experiment new projects, students learn communication skills and strategies to help them get an assignment done.

“I like being able to implement ideas, build things, and work on stuff that’s more real world applicable than just numbers on a page,” junior John Stevens said.

The deadline to complete projects also affects how students learn to manage their time well.

“I’d say on average, it takes four to six weeks to work on a project,” Nick said.”Obviously, most of the things that end up coming up are problems that you get through with the design, but I’d say they take a good bit of time.”