Submitted by the San Juan Island School District.

Engineering for US All (e4usa), a national initiative to bring engineering courses to high school students, is expanding its reach for the 2021-2022 academic year. Two years ago, e4usa launched a novel engineering curriculum in high schools across the United States. This multi-institutional effort was initiated by five universities: Arizona State University, University of Maryland, Morgan State University, Vanderbilt University, and Virginia Tech. It now has grown to include the University of Indianapolis.

Friday Harbor High School has recently become the newest e4usa high school partner and plans to bring the design-based introductory engineering course to its students this fall. Learn more at e4usa.org/partners.

The e4usa program aims to expand access to engineering for high school students, encourages them to see themselves as engineers, and helps them recognize the role of engineering in their everyday lives.

“I’ve learned the problem-solving process, which is applicable to any field,” said an e4usa student from Brentwood High School in Tennessee. “I’ve also learned about working in teams.”

The program’s pilot year was a great success! Additional high schools across the country joined our efforts in 2020-2021, and we are continuously expanding with even more high schools joining the team in 2021-2022. e4usa students are positively impacting their communities. Students in one Pennsylvania high school have partnered with a local elementary school to make education more accessible for students. “My students and I have benefited greatly from our experience,” says their e4usa teacher, Jim Muscarella.

The e4usa program fills a current gap in engineering education training by recruiting high school teachers of all disciplines. No prior engineering experience is required to become an e4usa teacher. In addition to intensive online and in-person professional learning opportunities for participating teachers, e4usa uses a partnership model that pairs high school teachers with engineers at local universities to provide support for the instruction of the course. Friday Harbor has partnered with the University of Washington to support Sam Garson who will be teaching the inaugural e4usa course at Friday Harbor for the 2021-2022 school year.

The e4usa curriculum is available to schools free of charge. Participating pilot teachers receive funds to purchase classroom materials. Adam Guidry, an e4usa teacher, from Tennessee said, “It has reinforced what I believe about teaching engineering and it’s super important that everybody should have an engineering class.”

This year, e4usa has reached over 1,500+ students, including numerous seniors who plan to study engineering and have been accepted to colleges like Georgia Institute of Technology, Drexel University, Tennessee Tech, University of Tennessee Knoxville, University of Central Florida, University of Maryland, University of Alabama, New Mexico Tech, and Colorado School of Mines. As a new e4usa high school partner, Friday Harbor High School will help e4usa reach over 2,000 students in the 2021-2022 academic year.

e4usa is supported by the National Science Foundation. To learn more about e4usa, please visit e4usa.umd.edu. If your child is a student at Friday Harbor High School and would like to enroll in the e4usa course, contact Hailey Henderson-Paul at haileyhendersonpaul@sjisd.org, or call 360-370-7139.

The San Juan Island School District School District offers classes in many career and technical education program areas such as Culinary Arts, Career Prep, STEM and Computer Science under its open admissions policy. For more information about CTE course offerings and admissions criteria, contact Liz Varvaro, elizabethvarvaro@sjisd.org, or Sam Garson, samuelgarson@sjisd.org, PO Box 458, FH, WA, 360-378-4133. Lack of English language proficiency will not be a barrier to admission and participation in career and technical education programs.

San Juan Island School District does not discriminate in any programs or activities on the basis of sex, race, creed, religion, color, national origin, age, veteran or military status, sexual orientation, gender expression or identity, disability, or the use of a trained dog guide or service animal and provides equal access to the Boy Scouts and other designated youth groups.