Everywhere in the world, towering structures surround us, each a stunning piece of work. But in order for such structures to arise, engineers with inventive minds are necessary to devise and construct them. The Engineering by Design elective introduces the basics of engineering to students and provides an opportunity to develop their engineering skills. The class combines hands-on learning with a technical education for students to engage in problem solving, idea development and collaboration to make a final product.

The Engineering by Design class is a full-year elective taught by engineering teacher Aubrey Love. Students design and create different structural pieces, including designing demos on computers, building structures using cardboard, 3D printing and digital art.

Sophomore Theodore Tsekov said because of the way the class is structured, it is an in-depth experience that provides a space for students to be imaginative and try alternative ways of thinking than in a standard academic class.

“In other classes, you’ll be learning about how to design things, whereas in the [Engineering by Design class], you get to physically design them and go through all the steps of designing something,” Tsekov said.

The class’s most recent project was a series of catapults that they designed, built and tested. The catapults were used to give an introduction to the course as, while the mechanism is simple, the trial and error, revisions and the countless problems people overcome are not. Love said the catapults were a success but getting to that point was a challenging process.

“The catapult project involves multiple goals that vary in difficulty and importance. Designers need to weigh the pros and cons when trying to meet each criterion. Teams are looking to design a device that can launch an egg as far as possible. They are looking to reduce the size of the device as much as possible,” Love said.

Sophomore Anna Lawson said the class teaches completely different skills than what she thought she would learn in school.

“[The class] combines [subjects] like math and engineering with designing and building. I really like this class because I feel like I’m learning things, but I also get the freedom to make each project my own,” Lawson said.

Love said one of the hardest parts of the elective is generating ideas and creating actual plans, but that this is part of the learning process.

“I hope students will embrace iteration and within that, failure as impetus and valuable data for another attempt. I hope students will value skill building as a necessary step in the pursuit of a goal,” Love said. “I hope students seek collaboration and, moreover, diverse collaborative environments, as they recognize the benefit of differing opinions, experiences and methods.”