After months of hard work during a challenging school year, Montgomery High School engineering students proudly displayed their engineering skills as part of the fourth annual Montgomery ISD Engineering Design and Development Expo Night.

The event, held on Friday, April 30, was the culmination of nearly four years of learning engineering theory as well as hands-on work designing and building.

Participating students are enrolled in the Montgomery High School Engineering Design and Development course, which is the capstone course in the Project Lead the Way program. The research course provides students with an avenue to develop secondary-level knowledge and skills in math, science and technology. Throughout their senior year in the Engineering Design and Development course, students work in teams to identify and develop a solution to an open-ended technical problem using their engineering design process skills. After designing, building and testing, the student teams present and defend their solution to an outside panel.

“This event brings to fruition all of the hard work our students have accomplished over the last four years in our engineering pathway,” MHS Project Lead the Way Instructor Russell Reid said. “We have moved away from theory and now they have produced tangible products designed to serve as a solution to a real world challenge.”

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The Engineering Design and Development course is designed to allow students maximum flexibility in how they structure their time while completing their work.  The project workload required a great amount of responsibility on the part of the student with some outside-the-classroom, research-based coursework. For example, students contacted outside professionals and obtained resources from around the United States to help complete their projects.

“An added benefit of this program is the development of valuable soft skills,” Reid said. “Throughout the design process students work with community mentors and engineering experts working not only on the actual design honing creative and problem-solving abilities, but also refining organizational, communication and interpersonal skills.”

Students participating in this year’s expo were Lain Morris, Daniel Chang, Kalani Hayden, Bradan Graham, Dustin Dillon, Ethan Reid, Samuel Cook, Robert Ackerly, Matt Rickman and Blaine Pavlock.

An overview of each project is below:

“Solo Spotter” – A safety device to aid a weightlifter while bench pressing without the support of a weightlifting spotter. (Daniel Chang, Matthew Rickman, Bradan Graham)

“Aegis Wear” – A belt buckle designed with built in GPS tracking and emergency alarm to protect and track the user. (Kalani Hayden, Robert Ackerly)

“Gamers Gauntlet” – Dual purpose gaming/graphic artist glove. The glove allows the user to switch between playing video games and working with artist tablets. (Blaine Pavlock, Lain Morrison)

“VaBox” – A unique design Shop-Vac that separates metal from waste. It has a built-in magnetic base that is easily removed for recycling.  (Ethan Reid, Dustin Dillon, Samuel Cook)