Going electric — Students building electric cars from the ground up

Motorists sick of high gas prices, take note: Utah teenagers are creating new ways to get around — some, with scrap metal off an F-16.

Students from Beaver, Milford and San Juan high schools, Farmington Junior High and a Farmington community built electric cars from the ground up. The rubber met the road — make that a race track — at a premiere state engineering challenge last spring.

But it's not the need for speed — and it's good thing, as Milford High's championship vehicle averaged 21.8 mph — that's driving the State Office of Education's engineering challenge. Rather, it's part of a national movement to taxi kids through engineering courses so they're more inclined to pick the high-demand career.

"It's helped me open my eyes on what the future is going to be like on renewable energy and electric cars," said Coltan Bradshaw, one of the young engineers from Milford, Beaver County, who someday wants to design a better windmill. The State Office of Education is pitching the engineering challenge to teachers across the state, and hopes to as much as triple the number of schools creating electric cars beginning this fall.

But if gearing students up for the future and hands-on learning isn't a good enough sell for the spendy project — Milford's cost about $4,000 — maybe the fun factor will be.

Utah students have dabbled in transportation creation for years. Granger High students have been building an airplane. Bonneville High graduate Brent Singleton last year earned two U.S. Environmental Protection Agency awards for creating environmentally friendly vehicles, including two electric junior dragsters.

The State Office of Education wants to push that kind of hands-on work to lure kids into engineering. Its pre-engineering pathways program funnels children into technology, engineering and design courses beginning in eighth grade, complemented by math leading up to pre-calculus and biology, physics and chemistry.

A national program, "Project Lead the Way," for which Weber State University is the Utah affiliate, offers more diverse options, including civil and aerospace engineering and computer-integrated manufacturing, plus the chance for college credits. It is available in 15 Utah schools: five Davis and two Ogden district schools, three charter schools, Jordan and Granite technology centers and schools in Logan, Uintah and Weber districts.

"We talk about improving math scores, and we talk about improving science scores, but if we don't make this education relevant to them, there's no way," said Melvin Robinson, technology and engineering education specialist for the State Office of Education.