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Externship Summary

RCNGM Leader: Dave Salonia, Project Lead the Way
Berlin High School

Externship: Pratt & Whitney

(Curriculum Project)

Lessons Learned

The ability to learn how a major company like Pratt & Whitney does engineering and then to make several contacts through face-to-face meetings and interviews. The Pratt & Whitney personnel were very cooperative and spent a good deal of time orienting me, providing shop tours, and helping me to develop several lessons that I am applying in my classroom.

The most challenging component was to absorb the massive amounts of information that several managers in the Engineering Building shared with me!

I was able to show the slide presentations that were given to me by the Pratt & Whitney managers. The slides were interesting, informative and really showed the students how the theories of parametric design, thermodynamics and heat transfer are applied to the design and manufacture of turbine blades. Each manager helped me to review and prepare the lesson plans, which incorporated the slides and some practical exercises for the students to solve.

The students were very interested in design of aircraft turbines. The Power point slides were very well done and the students were able to solve the problems. They expressed an interest in going back to Pratt, but this time to the engine assembly plant in Middletown. I have discussed this with a contact there and we are planning to arrange a field trip there sometime this year. Some of my engineering students chose Aerospace Engineering as a topic for their career research report as a result of the lessons that I brought back from Pratt & Whitney.

Externship Sustainability

I presented and discussed the benefits of this externship with Connecticut Technology Education high school teachers and counselors at a seminar held at the Radisson – Cromwell (about 200 attendees). I also prepared a power point slide show and gave a presentation to the CT Project Lead the Way teachers’ annual conference held Jan. 12, 2007 at CCSU. I also testified at the State Capitol during a session on Jan. 30, 2007, to help promote a measure to fund the development of a CT Project Lead the Way Advisory Committee. As a master teacher of Project Lead the Way, I also promoted the externship concept to 11 teachers who were training at Worcester Polytechnic Institute this past summer. I was interviewed on WTIC-AM last year and spoke about the externship program along with Lauren Wiseman. I was also featured in an article by the industry publication, Mass Tech. last summer.

I always share the positive benefits of my externships with my administration and colleagues. Recently, I tried to introduce a school-wide program for all teachers that would use several local companies to mentor groups of students and teachers during the school day. This would provide internships for students and externships for teachers at the same time. Initial reaction of the department heads was very positive but several logistics would need to be considered (eg. program management, busing, curriculum updating, etc.). I think every technology and engineering teacher should do externships as much as possible to keep their knowledge current and provide field trips, internships, shadowing, and career opportunities for their students.

 

 

 

 

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The Regional Center for Next Generation Manufacturing is funded through a grant from the National Science Foundation Advanced Technology Education program. Copyright 2005. All rights reserved.