Everyone has heard that engineering is in the highest demand and the most useful for occupations. City High has three classes for students to get introduced and experience actual problems and programs that engineers use and have made.

The classes that City High is offering this year are Introductions to Engineering Design (IED), Principles of Engineering (POE), and Civil Engineering and Architecture.

City High has offered more than these three classes at City High in the past. Not enough people have signed up for those offered classes and there are not enough teachers. The classes that were not offered this year are Digital Electronics, Aerospace, Environmental Engineering, and Computer Engineering. City High has taught all of these but Computer Engineering, but the engineering teachers are hoping to offer all but Environmental Engineering next year.

The way that all teachers are placed is decided by the students. If more people sign up for english classes more teachers will be hired as english teachers.

“We had 18 sign up for digital electronics, which is enough for a class, but 35 signed up for algebra so I’m teaching algebra,” said Mrs. Peterson, the teacher of engineering classes.

West High offers IED, POE, Environmental and Aerospace. The more requested classes are POE and IED. However with these prioritized classes sometimes don’t have enough resources to keep up with the number of students.

“In some classes we have 28 to 30 kids and it’s great but we only have 27 computers,” Peterson said.

The classes are very helpful for the students not just for learning classroom or textbook style, but also for working in teams and experience for working in the real world.

“I think they are beneficial for college credit for free if the students take the end of the year test, shows good and difficult topics, and shows very different ways of working,” Peterson said.

The students are very positive about these classes even when they did not enjoy the engineering parts as the classes are very fun and hands on.

“Sometimes it was easy sometimes it was hard, and I didn’t like engineering after that but it’s good for getting to know if you don’t like engineering,” Jake Russell ‘17 who has taken POE and taken the end of the year test but did not like it for it was only for Kirkwood, who pays for the class. “Looking back it was difficult but definitely worth it.”