Once again, South Park High School has been recognized as a Project Lead the Way (PLTW) Distinguished School. Only 262 high schools across the country received this prestigious honor for the 2022-2023 school year for providing broad access to transformative learning experiences for students through PLTW courses. This national distinction is in recognition of the high school’s PLTW engineering courses.
Distinguished Schools are committed to increasing student access, engagement and achievement in their PLTW programs. To be eligible for the designation, South Park High School had to meet the following criteria:
- Had 25 percent of students or more participate in PLTW courses, or of those who participated in PLTW, at least 33 percent took two or more PLTW courses;
- Offer and had students enrolled in at least three PLTW courses;
- Have strategies in place that support reasonably proportional representation with regard to race, ethnicity, poverty, and/or gender.
“We are honored to recognize South Park High School for its unwavering commitment to provide students with an excellent educational experience,” said Dr. David Dimmett, PLTW President and CEO. “South Park High School should be very proud of this achievement and celebrate their important work empowering students with the knowledge and skills to succeed, not only in STEM subjects, but also more generally in life and career."
South Park High School offers a four-level honors engineering pathway in ninth through twelfth grades. Mr. Dave Bailey teaches the freshmen- and sophomore-level courses (introduction to engineering design and principles of engineering) in the pathway. Students in introduction to engineering design focus on the engineering design process, parametric 3D modeling and reverse engineering. In principles of engineering, students explore a wide range of engineering topics in this rigorous course in applied physics.
Mr. Eric Wisler teaches the junior- and senior-level courses. Juniors in digital electronics delve into circuit design and Boolean logic. The senior-level engineering design and development class is utilized as a research, development and prototyping course.
PLTW is a nonprofit organization that serves millions of PreK-12 students and teachers in more than 12,200 schools across the United States.