Riley High School’s Project Lead The Way program gets national recognition
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A high school in South Bend recently earned the Project Lead the Way (PLTW) Distinguished High School designation for the fifth year in a row.
The designation recognizes Riley High School for helping its students take ownership of their education by increasing access, engagement and achievement in their PLTW programs.
Riley High is one of 20 in Indiana to receive the designation for the 2023-24 academic year and the only school in northern Indiana to receive the designation for five consecutive years.
“Project Lead the Way and the engineering magnet was what brought me to Riley High School,” Lluiton White, a senior at Riley High School, said. “I was super interested in robotics engineering at the time, so I got involved and went the aerospace route and learned a lot about that.”
Riley offers seven computer science classes and seven engineering classes, ranging from introductory courses to advanced classes such as cybersecurity, aerospace, civil, and electrical engineering.
“My favorite course was aerospace engineering. We took that junior year with Mr. Ponder,” senior Isaiah Pryor said. “It was a very cool course where we got to do flight simulations, and it brought all types of challenges like figuring out trajectories and certain things you have to know about flight.”
At the school’s 14th annual Innovation Fair, 26 seniors presented 13 different capstone projects to community members, family, and friends.
Pryor and White partnered up to create a business providing outdoor games for different occasions and events.
“Our game rental service is called Fun-Filled SB. We’ll come to your place and set up any yard games that you want to run and we’ll come and take it down,” White said. “We have games like cornhole, ladder ball, Spikeball, anything you would need, so you don’t have to purchase any of those things for grad parties or bar mitzvahs or any kind of party.”
PLTW is a nationally accredited STEM curriculum based in Indianapolis, utilized by over 12,000 high schools across all 50 states. Only 218 schools received the Distinguished High School designation this year.
“Our goal in the Riley High School PLTW program is to provide students with hands-on technology learning opportunities to prepare them for universities, careers, and branches of the military,” Seth Ponder, PLTW Educator at Riley High School, said. “We had many other students designing projects at this year’s innovation fair. One was an affordable, airless bike tire that was super successful. There was some website design, some VR design, some app design.”
Career technical education is one of the most popular pathways for students in South Bend, giving them an opportunity to get a leg up over their peers in college. Pryor and White, both athletes, also found the program accommodating of their different passions.
“I recently had a golf match that coincided with the Innovation Fair, which is the ending project for our engineering development design class,” White said. “I was super bummed out that I couldn’t go to that but accommodations were made, and the teachers were very understanding. It went as smoothly as it could have gone.”
Ponder added that the school makes room for all kinds of extracurricular activities that pique students’ interest. Students are also encouraged to launch businesses based on their projects. Pryor and White recently got their first Fun-Filled SB sale and are exploring the potential to also start something similar when they go off to Trine University in Angola.
“We were acquaintances before this, we sat with each other in sophomore year. But I think our friendship got a lot better over this program,” White said. “We’re rooming together and I don’t think we would have been close enough to approach each other about rooming with each other if not for this program.”
White plans to study health and physical education with a minor in coaching and Pryor wants to study mechanical engineering, so he can eventually get into the aerospace field.
In May, students in Ponder’s aerospace class launched a space balloon. With Ponder’s guidance, the students were able to seamlessly execute the project, including sending emails, requesting transport, receiving donations and calculating the flight trajectory of the balloon.
While Pryor and White said they are very appreciative of the experiences and projects they’ve been involved in, both students said money was oftentimes a challenge in executing some of their projects.
“We built our own cornhole boards, and the lumber and the spray paint and everything involved with that was kind of expensive for high school students,” White added. “So I think one of the only improvements that I could really think of is maybe some type of grant for building our prototypes for our business.”
Ponder sees the challenge as an opportunity for students to even develop other skills like fundraising and persuasion.
“Funding for education where technology is involved gets really expensive,” he said. “I personally find that when students ask for things and do the research, there’s a little bit more buy-in from either the administration or the grant people or the school board, but it also gives the students ownership of their projects.”
You can view the full list of Indiana high schools to receive the designation by clicking here.