News Items

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
February 1, 2008

Contact: Communications Manager Tom Farmer, 800-828-5787, tfarmer@pitsco.com

Engineering guides help teachers fulfill the ‘E’ in STEM education

Author Celeste Baine incorporates activities, challenges, and career information

Building an engineering curriculum can prove a towering challenge, one that Pitsco’s Contextual Engineering Guide series aims to simplify.

“The ‘E’ part of STEM education is the one most teachers struggle to incorporate,” said Bill Holden, catalog product development director. “With these guides, you can custom build an engineering curriculum by selecting the guides and activities that fit your needs.”

Each guide uses a variety of activities to cover vital subject matter for each area of engineering. For example, the Engineering Graphics Teacher’s Guide incorporates sketching, logo designing, screen printing, modeling, and milling.

Written by Celeste Baine – biomedical engineer, Engineering Education Service Center director, and noted author of engineering books for middle and high school students – each guide offers five or more activities, two challenges, career information, and standards correlations.

“By learning about engineering in middle and high school, students can see that it’s one of the best ways to make our world a better place,” Baine said. “Through problem-solving activities, students will begin to see that we live in a designed world, and it’s up to their generation to design better cell phones, skateboards, or music players.”

Two of the guides, Civil Engineering and Aeronautical Engineering, are currently available. Engineering Principles and Engineering Graphics are scheduled for release in spring 2008. To learn more about the Contextual Engineering Guide series, visit www.shop-pitsco.com or call 800-835-0686.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
May 10, 2006

Celeste Baine Recognized for Exciting Students About Engineering

Eugene, OR - Celeste Baine, a biomedical engineer and director of the Engineering Education Service Center based in Eugene, Oregon, was acknowledged for her outstanding accomplishments in motivating and inspiring students to pursue careers in engineering. Winner of the 2005 Norm Augustine Award, Ms. Baine is credited for being an outstanding contributor to the nationwide efforts to increase engineering student enrollment. The Norm Augustine Award is presented annually to an engineer who has demonstrated the capacity for communicating the excitement and wonder of engineering. The award is conferred on those rare individuals who can speak with passion about engineering - its promise as well as its responsibility - so that the public may have a better understanding of engineering and a better appreciation for how engineers improve our quality of life.

The national award was sponsored by the American Association of Engineering Societies (AAES) and was given at its 27th annual awards ceremony on May 8, 2006 at the National Academy of Engineering in Washington, DC. "I am proud to acknowledge Ms. Baine for her outstanding contributions in developing presentations and leading an organization that promotes engineering opportunities for today's youth," said Reed Brockman, outreach director for the Boston Chapter of the American Society for Civil Engineers. "Ms. Baine is one of the most creative people working in engineering outreach and I know of many girls that credit her for pursuing engineering." Past recipients include Neil Armstrong, the first man on the moon and Dr. N Jan Davis, the director of the Flight Projects Directorate at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center. To book a presentation with Celeste Baine, visit: www.engineeringedu.com/pw/

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE March 22, 2006 To Blog or not to Blog - That's the Recruiting Question

Eugene, OR - Students considering attending college are logging onto the Internet and reading blogs that feature tales of sipping coffee, the latest fashion, how to get around in a college town and signing a lease on a new apartment. Blogs are all the rage and have become one of several Web-based recruitment strategies that colleges across the country are employing as they attempt to lure tech-savvy high school students to their campuses.

"One of the things obviously about student recruitment at any school is the people generally talking to you about the university are selling the school and getting paid to get you to come to the school," said Schreiber, who is from Orange County, Calif. "It's a really good way for prospective students to hear things from real students who don't have an agenda and are telling it the way they really see it as a student." If even getting to the blog stage is overwhelming, an excellent first step may be watching the EESC's new DVD, The Road Ahead: Choosing an Engineering School. The video motivates and helps students begin to sift through the maze of choices available when considering colleges. The Road Ahead answers the questions that help every student figure out what they want and need from a college. Taken to heart, this video helps students choose a school in less time, with less struggle and less uncertainty. Infused with interviews of engineering students, The Road Ahead gives advice on choosing schools based on location, school size, cost, faculty, and academics. Helpful recommendations from college students makes this video a winning ticket to finding the right engineering school and making the smartest choice based on wants, needs and preferences. For more information, visit http://www.engineeringedu.com/store/ra.html

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE March 1, 2006 Saavy Middle School Teachers Begin Engineering Programs Eugene, OR - Most people don't label engineers as creative, but employers such as Disney, Pixar, Nike, Intel, Hasbro, Mattel, Industrial Light and Magic (Lucas Films), Nintendo, Sony, Hewlett Packard and the millions other companies that employ engineers might argue with you. Engineers are the concept people and often the idea people too. They are the ones that decided they didn't like to clean house so now we have the Roomba vacuum cleaner that automatically vacuums your house. They are the ones that figured out how to make a roller coaster careen forward at 120 M.P.H. in four seconds without killing you. They are the ones that figured out how to make cars that can run on electricity or fuel cell technology to keep our atmosphere cleaner. They create medical equipment used by doctors to keep us healthy and they even work in the food industry to make chocolate taste better. Engineers aren't the only ones being creative - As was the case for one middle school biology teacher that was asked to teach a one week introduction engineering course. Not only was this out of her area of expertise, she had no idea where to start. Teaching Engineering Made Easy, A Friendly Introduction to Engineering Activities for Middle School Teachers, C's Blast Packs and the Teaching Engineering Resource Kit can help solve the problem. Teaching Engineering Made Easy gives classroom teachers an easy and dynamic way to meet curriculum standards and competencies. You'll find creative and innovative projects, lessons and activities that actively engage students in learning about engineering and our technological world. For easy use, the projects, lessons and activities are spiral bound to enable an 8.5" x 11" lay-flat format for photocopying. C's Blast Packs are the quick and easy way to get started teaching engineering by bringing it into the classroom without the hassle of rounding up materials. The teach engineering resource kit is an easy to use kit for the teacher that wants to save time and get on the fast track teaching engineering activities. The teaching guide, C's Blast Packs and the resource kit were developed to help middle and high school teachers with no engineering background teach engineering. The activities and resources were designed to help teachers stimulate student's thought processes and get them thinking like an engineer. By using these teaching tools, students can see that engineering is not something to be afraid of but a realistic way to solve the problems of everyday life. Released to coincide with National Engineers Week's new program, "Connecting Educators to Engineering" - a program that reaches out to up to 10,000 middle school teachers with a coordinated push to train engineers to directly interact with educators, provide needed learning materials, and create an online forum for educator and engineer interaction.