Powered by the wind and the sun, Baltimore High School students get a jump start on college

Summary form only given. In an innovative pilot program, students at Baltimore's prestigious technology magnet school are designing, manufacturing, assembling and testing solar-powered cookers and windmills alongside first-year students at the University of Maryland's A. James Clark School of Engineering. This cooperative venture, called "PracticUM", gives seniors at Baltimore Polytechnic Institute experience in college-level design classes, in addition to college credit. They spend the entire semester learning computer-aided design, spreadsheet skills, team work, customer requirements, design, manufacturing, cost constraints, and engineering sciences. They use these skills to design devices with real-world applications. This "hands-on" method of learning engineering is an outgrowth of the extraordinarily successful "Introduction to Engineering Design" freshmen program at the University of Maryland.