Alma Mater matters, The

ASEE Prism, Oct 2002 by Drenning, Erin, Mathias-Riegel, Barbara

BROOKLYN TECHNICAL HIGH SCHOOL OFFERS ITS STUDENTS SOME OF THE MOST ADVANCED AND INNOVATIVE CURRICULA IN NEW YORK,THANKS IN PART TO A MULTI-MILLION DOLLAR ALUMNI FUND. STUDENTS FROM BOTH A SENIOR CIVIL ENGINEERING COURSE AND A FRESHMAN DESIGN CLASS ARE SHOWN HERE, EXHIBITING SUCH PROJECTS AS CARDBOARD CHAIRS, POP-UP BOOKS, AND A 3-D MODEL OF A MONORAIL

Ten million dollars can do a lot for a student body. At Brooklyn Technical High School, the payoff from such generous alumni gifts includes a near 100 percent college entrance rate and university-level class projects.

CARETECH, the alumni-driven monetary campaign designed to maintain Brooklyn Tech's 75 years of excellence, was founded in 1999 with the help of private industry grants and funding from New York City's Board of Education.

The generous alumni fund enables teachers to shape and update coursework and provides mentors from private businesses, colleges, and universities to work closely with the students. CARETECH has formed strong ties with Polytechnic University over the past few years, and next spring, Matt Mandery, project director and former principal of the school, expects that Brooklyn Tech students will be offered a course in construction management at the university. "This is not something that a university could do with a typical school, but our students have the engineering background to do well in a college course." To date, the alumni campaign has established 15 ongoing programs at Brooklyn Tech, including research opportunities and paid internships in private industry.

One of CARETECH's programs is a senior civil engineering course in which student teams complete their senior design projects, starting with a feasibility study and progressing to a 3-D model and final report. This past year, says teacher Issac Honor, students developed seven different projects, including a multi-level parking facility, a monorail for a park across the street from the school, a handball court, and a skate park. "We used to do a pedestrian bridge, but student feedback showed that while the bridge was good, they wanted to do something on their own," says Honor. "Now there is room for students to come up with new ideas for their own projects. They can expand on an existing idea, too, but they're really going to have to embellish it and take it to another level."

Students in the course are linked with engineering mentors from such supporting agencies as the New York City Technical College and the city's Department of Transportation, who teach them everything from how to calculate support loads to how to get approval from a City Parks committee to move a tree.

Brooklyn Tech also recently revamped a freshman design course to give students more hands-on experience. The result: first-year high schoolers are creating pop-up books and designing chairs made out of corrugated cardboard that can withstand 150 pounds. "The freshman program is really unique because students that age aren't usually given the opportunity to give feedback or express themselves," says Honor. "So what we end up with are projects that are exciting and that teach the kids about things like tension and compression, but aren't too technically boring."

Honor also points out that the projects available to freshmen are gender neutral. "We're constructing a chair or a book, something that everybody uses and something that aesthetics plays a role in," he says. "Engineering is not a `guy thing,' it's not all about cars and boats and legos. There's a lot of opportunity for women of all races in technology careers," Honor continues. "We just have to be able to attract females into engineering at an early age, or we're going to lose them to other fields." And the success of the freshman design course is just one of the indicators of CARETECH's influence on Brooklyn Tech.

"Through CARETECH, we wanted not just to donate money sporadically to the school but to have the school renew itself through ways like changing the curriculum and providing professional development," says Mandery. "For most of the alumni (who give money to CARETECH), they feel that going to Brooklyn Tech was their pivotal educational experience," explains Mike Weiss, who taught at his alma mater for 27 years and now chairs the alumni association. "It's a feeling like many people have with their college."

Little wonder. Brooklyn Tech is one of three New York City public high schools that requires competitive examination for admission. And of those three, it is the only school to offer a choice of majors during the junior and senior years. Fifteen of the 16 majors are in engineering, science, or technology. Last year, Brooklyn Tech boasted 4,200 students and 220 teachers, and the previous year, 98.4 percent of the senior graduates entered four-year colleges.

"The history of Tech is preparing young people who are upwardly mobile, particularly in New York City where the students may come from diverse cultural groups and with blue-collar backgrounds," says Weiss. "Some of them are the first in their family to go on to college." and the Band Plays On