Covington Catholic High School will a STEM night will be held in the CovCath gymnasium on April 17 from 7-8:15 p.m.
Many schools have introduced and enhanced curriculum programs focused on STEM (the coordinated integration of Science, Technology, Engineering and Math learning) over the past decade since the U.S. Department of Education declared the advancement of STEM education a priority. It’s no secret that these skills are considered critical to technological innovation and vital to economic progress in all fields.
Covington Catholic has made big commitments to STEM over recent years, including the adoption of Project Lead The Way’s (PLTW) curriculum program and the construction of a new academic wing with STEM program-specific facilities (to be completed by Fall of 2018).
The evening of April 17 is open to the public and will feature Covington Catholic STEM students from four PLTW classes showcasing their work.
The Introduction to Engineering Design (IED) students will be presenting “Reverse Engineering” projects.
The Principles of Engineering (POE) students will be demonstrating their automation projects.
Aerospace Engineering (AE) students will be demonstrating their gliders.
Engineering Design and Development (EDD) students will be displaying their projects which include: Variable Combustion Ratio Engine Concept, UV-Clean, a solution for public restrooms, and Safe Drive (a solution to help people with neck injuries and chronic back problems to drive).
As the STEM night will demonstrate, PLTWs curriculum is based on activity-, project-, and problem-based (APB) instructional design, centered on hands-on, real-world activities, projects, and problems that help students understand how the knowledge and skills they develop in the classroom may be applied in everyday life. This approach supports student learning through structured activities and projects that empower students to become independent in the classroom and help them build skill sets to apply to an open-ended design problem. CovCath is uniquely able to leverage the benefits, as the strength of CovCath’s Science, Math, and Technology (Computer Aided Design, Computer Programming) departments, provides a strong foundation to STEM learning.
PLTW reinforced this claim when they named CovCath a “Distinguished School” based on performance standards, one of only 133 high schools across the country and 6 schools in Kentucky to receive the honor, out of the over 10,500 schools across the U.S. served by PLTW.
