Students

Identified STEM Students

The School of Engineering choice program recruits qualified and interested student candidates from across Chatham County. Because the School of Engineering is a Choice Program within the school district, we work to recruit all students for the program. We hold recruiting events at feeder school and district-wide events including The STEM & Student Success Expo, Girls in Engineering Day, GIS Day, and FIRST Lego League events. At each event, we particularly encourage under-represented students to apply to the program, including minority and female students. Members of the Society of Women Engineers and the Society of American Military Engineers are part of our Business Education Advisory Committee and are active participants in our recruitment efforts. As a Choice Program within the school, students from any high school within the county can apply for the program. The selection process is rigorous: in order to be accepted into the lottery process, students must meet entry requirements with an 80.0%+ core GPA, a 228 MAP Reading and a 232 MAP Math score.

SCCPSS Choice Program information can be found here.

In 2019, the Jenkins Engineering Team (JETs) was formed to focus on recruitment and community outreach. Students in JETs are involved in STEM/STEAM nights at local elementary and middle schools. Emphasis is also placed on non-traditional participation events like Society of Women Engineers (SWE) and Girls Engineer It Day.

Student Internships

In the last decade, business representatives from throughout the Coastal Region of Georgia identified an aging population of engineers and workers in STEM fields. Because the engineering workforce will be dwindling in the coming years, these businesses and our school leaders have partnered together to identify and recruit students with an aptitude for math and science who could become engineers and bring their talents back to this region. Local businesses and post-secondary institutions such as DIRTT, Georgia Power, Georgia Tech summer camps, Gulfstream, MLET (Maritime Logistics Education Taskforce), and International Paper (just to name a few) employ our students in internships, thereby allowing students to develop relationships with these businesses and to receive real-life work experience in the field. Students also complete capstone projects that address real-world issues and use problem-solving skills to develop solutions to those issues.

Ideally, once these students earn their post-secondary degrees and certifications, they will return to the Coastal Region to improve our communities with their talents. We see these efforts as being mutually beneficial for all involved; businesses will have capable engineers—engineers who can work to identify and create solutions to problems around our region; and students will be exposed to and well-prepared for an education in engineering, a field that is growing exponentially and can provide the monetary rewards that would benefit many of our students from homes of lower socioeconomic standing. Our efforts have been working, as we’ve increased the number of seats for students accepted in our program and increased our number of graduates who go on to pursue STEM majors in college. The School of Engineering is a great benefit to our community, and the Coastal Region will be reaping the benefits of our efforts for years and years to come.

Capstone Projects

As part of the Project Lead the Way course pathway that our School of Engineering students complete, senior students complete the capstone course, Engineering Design and Development. In this course, students collaborate with group members identify a problem and create a solution to that problem that doesn’t already exist. Students design and build a prototype, and then present their product in a final presentation for stakeholders including business and industry partners. This year’s student creations included such products as a mobile application to help students with time management and organization, a 3-D printed prototype to collect and harness rainwater runoff from the school to generate electricity, and an updated traffic light signal system to alert drivers of upcoming patterns.