Photo by Sam Yu Building a bridge out of pasta are Laura Hobbs, left, and Kelly Misner. They participated in a special engineering program sponsored by Johns Hopkins University at Tuscarora High School this summer. Purchase this photo

The spaghetti bridge breaking contest was the highlight of the closing ceremony for the four-week Engineering Innovation program. The program was developed through Johns Hopkins University as part of Science-Technology-Engineering-Math education.

"STEM is so important to the local and national economy, so we were looking for a good program to bring to the county at the school level," said David Esworthy, vice chairman of the Frederick County Workforce Development Board.

Learning about Engineering Innovation was a random chance, Esworthy said. He sat next to a representative from Johns Hopkins at a state Workforce Development meeting and struck up a conversation about STEM.

Last June, the board partnered with Frederick County Public Schools to begin planning the class. The school system recruited students and provided the Tuscarora High space free of charge.

"We weren't sure we could make it go because of our resources, but as we reached out to science and engineering firms in the area, there was a lot of interest," Esworthy said.

"Without a whole lot of fuss, we found a lot of cooperation between the public and private sector."

Normal cost of tuition for Engineering Innovation students is around $1,800. Donations from seven major organizations knocked the cost down to $500 per student, and a scholarship fund through the Workforce Development Board awarded additional aid.

Battelle National Biodefense Institute became the leading donor by underwriting the cost of the two instructors.

"One of the things we've been doing since the summer of 2007 is employing high school teachers in our lab, so this fit nicely into our mission space," institute communications director Brian Gaudet said.

STEM focuses on maintaining student interest in the sciences. The U.S. is heavily eclipsed by China and India when producing engineers, Gaudet said.

"We want to increase our numbers while still ensuring quality," he said. "Instilling these values in high school and middle school students is critical.

Anything we can do to spark that desire or support this program, we'll give it our all."

Students in the program were rising juniors and seniors from Tuscarora, Thomas Johnson, Frederick , Brunswick and Walkersville high schools, with one home-schooled student.

The class was taught by Karen Borgsmiller from Hood College and Paul Hoyt from Tuscarora.

"This is a great overview of the engineering disciplines," Borgsmiller said. "It trains them to think in a different way."

Besides building spaghetti bridges, students also conducted a robotics lab, three chemical engineering labs, material science labs, remote distance measurement and gave formal request for proposal presentations.

"We didn't teach them anything they didn't know," Hoyt said. "We just showed them new ways to apply it outside the textbook."

Students who pass the final exam and successfully complete the course will receive three engineering credits for Johns Hopkins University or three transferable credits for other schools.

"This is a 13-week freshman course at Johns Hopkins University squished in to four weeks, and it's a challenge to fit it all in," Hoyt said.

Balanced between two tables, the spaghetti bridges had to hold a minimum of 3 kilograms to pass the test. Students wore hard hats and safety goggles to attach weights until the break point. The winning bridge held 32.6 kilograms or about 72 pounds.

"We kind of expected to win," said Richard Nehring, 15. "We saw everyone else's and just thought ours was better, but we didn't expect it to hold that much."

Several students were prepared to head from the closing ceremony to North Carolina for the National Society of Black Engineers engineering conference, including Tamika Saunders, 16, and Erinn Gales, 16.

"This was a fun program and a good experience," Tamika said.

"I'm not completely sure I want to go into engineering, but I wanted to come out and see what it was all about," Erinn said.

Engineering Innovation has 13 classes in California, Maryland, New Mexico and Pennsylvania.

Esworthy hopes the program can continue next year and expand to include a second class.

"We've impacted these students' lives forever," he said.

"Johns Hopkins has found that students who participate have their confidence enhanced and are more likely to pursue rigorous studies in high school and college, leading to more career paths."