e4usa In the News

Inclusive Engineering Education Takes Centre Stage as KSTU Joins Forces with e4usa
July 27, 2023Kumasi Technical University (KsTU) is set to make history as it becomes the first and only Technical University in Africa to provide the Engineering for US All (e4usa) curriculum. This milestone was achieved following the success of a recent e4usa workshop in Ghana, during which Ing. Linus Antonio Ofori Agyekum, a Lecturer at KsTU, was named one of Ghana's e4usa champions.

Engage with e4usa at the 2023 ASEE Annual Conference
June 20, 2023e4usa participating in the American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE) Annual Conference being held June 25–28, 2023 at the Baltimore Convention Center, MD. President Pines and e4usa Co-Director and Vanderbilt University Adjunct Professor Stacy Klein-Gardner will lead a panel discussion on e4usa—a first-of-its-kind, national initiative designed to introduce engineering design principles to a new generation of students—and provide an update on its transition from an NSF-funded grant to a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization, as well as the next steps for the initiative.

Albuquerque high schoolers build special tricycle for Rio Rancho preschooler
May 26, 2023A preschooler with a disability has a new way to get around, thanks to a team of high school students and their creativity. “Pink is my favorite color. And I give it a big thumbs up,” says Adriel Baldonado. Adriel is a five-year-old preschooler in Rio Rancho who loves the color pink. “I have everything pink in my house. Pink this, pink everything.”

Lessons Learned from Feeding Lemurs Extend Beyond Duke
May 17, 2023When Emily Moreno-Hernandez saw the final designs for the feeding apparatus that was installed at the Duke Lemur Center, she couldn’t help but feel a sense of pride. “I was excited to see that Oxford Prep students had a lot of the same ideas as the college students,” said Moreno-Hernandez, who coordinates operations and outreach for the Shared Materials Instrumentation Facility (SMIF) at Duke. “I could tell that they’d been paying attention and were embracing learning the engineering design process.”

Pines delivers the most recent Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Justice colloquium at Tufts School of Engineering.
April 4, 2023Academic and extracurricular experiences in middle and high school often inform a student’s choices of what to study in college and by extension, what career path to follow. To that end, President of the University of Maryland Dr. Darryll Pines opened his recent Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Justice colloquium presentation at Tufts University by asking how many people in the audience took an engineering course in high school. The answer? Hardly anyone.

Pines to Introduce Engineering Education Program to Ghanaian High Schools
March 28, 2023University of Maryland President Darryll J. Pines will implement his signature engineering education program in Ghana under an agreement signed last week with the West African country’s Ministry of Education and other partners. He traveled to West Africa during UMD's Spring Break to introduce the program he conceived to democratize STEM education and teach engineering principles to high schoolers. This partnership with Ghana will be the first outside the United States. “It was enriching and productive, working to increase access to engineering curriculum to students we need in the profession,” Pines said.

Democratizing Engineering for Every High School Student
March 16, 2022One of the greatest and most enduring strengths of the United States has been its ability to attract global talent in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) to bolster its economic and technological competitiveness. To this end, the White House recently announced new actions and pathways for international STEM scholars, students, researchers, and experts to contribute to innovation and job creation efforts across the United States. But it is also crucial to recognize the importance of increasing and training the domestic workforce of scientists—especially engineers. The nation’s current STEM shortages within research, development, and innovation communities cannot be addressed solely by attracting more global talent...

Local high school’s pre-engineering program will be highlighted in NASA national outreach event
Jan 13, 2022Engineering design projects by Brentwood High School students will be highlighted Jan. 26, 2022, during a NASA-University of Virgin Islands Educator Outreach Event. The weeklong collaboration between UVI and NASA to provide engaging STEM educational programming includes participation by Engineering for US All (e4usa), a national initiative designed to introduce engineering design principles to students in grades 9 through 12. Wednesday, Jan. 26, is dedicated to e4usa national pre-engineering outreach programming. Sessions that day will highlight three e4usa schools. Two of the schools are in the Virgin Islands. Brentwood High School, a public school near Nashville and located in Brentwood, Tennessee, will present during the 11 a.m. CT slot.

e4usa, an NSF-funded program that makes engineering more accessible to high school students and educators
Nov 8, 2021Stacy Klein-Gardner, adjunct professor of the practice of biomedical engineering, serves as co-director and co-PI for e4usa. University of Maryland President Darryll J. Pines is the program’s principal investigator and was instrumental in launching e4usa in 2018 while serving as dean of the A. James Clark School of Engineering. “e4usa seeks to democratize and demystify engineering. I am delighted to be doing this not only nationally, but also in Vanderbilt’s backyard at three MNPS schools and Williamson County’s Brentwood High School where I serve as their university liaison and attend class weekly,” Klein-Gardner said.

Christel House Watanabe High School Joins e4usa
Oct 11, 2021This year, e4usa has reached over 1,500+ students, including numerous seniors who plan to study engineering and have been accepted to colleges like Georgia Institute of Technology, Drexel University, Tennessee Tech, University of Tennessee Knoxville, University of Central Florida, University of Maryland, University of Alabama, New Mexico Tech, and Colorado School of Mines. As a new e4usa high school partner, Christel House Watanabe HS will help e4usa reach over 2,000 students in the 2021-2022 academic year.

NSF Awards UMD, Partners $4M to Expand National High School Engineering Program
Sep 1, 2021The University of Maryland and partner institutions will receive $4 million over the next three years to broaden the impact of Engineering for US All (e4usa), a National Science Foundation (NSF)-funded program that makes engineering more accessible to high school students and educators. e4usa provides an educational curriculum for students to learn and demonstrate engineering principles, skills, and practices while training educators interested in teaching. University of Maryland President Darryll J. Pines is the program’s principal investigator and was instrumental in launching e4usa in 2018 while serving as dean of the A. James Clark School of Engineering.

CHS Students Getting Hands-on Engineering Experience
Jan 26, 2021In a new course offered this academic year at Catholic High School, Virginia Beach, it’s the students who are doing the testing. “Engineering for US All,” a national pilot program developed by the University of Maryland, aims to teach students the principles of engineering by allowing them to put them into practice.“The course is almost exclusively project- based,” said CHS physics instructor William Silkman, a retired Naval engineer.

Revealing The World of Engineering to Young Minds
Jan 11, 2021The ASU collaboration with e4usa started with a discussion at an American Society for Engineering Education conference between an NSF program manager, Pines and Professor Ann McKenna, who is the Fulton Schools vice dean of strategic advancement. They agreed to leverage ASU’s strengths and combine efforts to advance a proposal effort around e4usa. NSF funding was awarded in 2018.

TSU, Vanderbilt partner with national initiative to bring engineering to Tennessee high schools
July, 7, 2020Under the initiative, TSU’s College of Engineering will work with students at Stratford STEM Magnet High School in a curriculum that introduces basic principles of engineering, and allows students to design and build projects through a hands-on learning experience. For the last eight years, the TSU College of Engineering has been working with Stratford in many other precollege engineering programs.

Vanderbilt partners with NSF’s e4usa to bring engineering to Tennessee high schools
June 11, 2020Vanderbilt University was among five universities to initiate the program last fall when e4usa launched in high schools across the country. Vanderbilt, Arizona State University, University of Maryland, Morgan State University and Virginia Tech partnered with high schools in their states to enroll students in e4usa’s free, design-based introductory engineering course.

UNM Partners with Sandia Prep High School to Join e4usa
May 25, 2020The University of New Mexico has recently signed on as a member of Engineering for US All (e4usa), which is a National Science Foundation-funded pilot program to bring engineering courses to high schools. UNM’s School of Engineering will partner with Sandia Prep High School in Albuquerque and Mescalero Apache High School in Mescalero, N.M., to bring design-based introductory engineering courses to students. The partnership will launch in fall 2020.

e4usa Students Help with COVID-19 Pandemic
May 15, 2020When Dr. Amanda Berrang needed some PPE shields during the COVID-19 pandemic, BGCCA had to design a shield to fit the optical exam equipment instead of Dr. Amanda's head. Thanks to Kayla Cantrell's Engineering Class and our partners at Buchanan County Career Technology and Higher Learning Center, BGCCA was able to fit all of Virginia Eye Care Clinic's exam room equipment with protective shields.

e4usa Students Design Accessible Learning Tool
Feb 12, 2020When teachers in the Life Skills class at Whitemarsh Elementary School needed some help to make a tool more accessible for one of their students, they turned to Plymouth Whitemarsh High School (PWHS). The team needed a keyguard for a communication device to help Jamir isolate and select words on an iPad.

PWHS Partners with Virginia Tech to Pilot New Engineering Class
Sept 4, 2019In June, Plymouth Whitemarsh High School (PWHS) Science Teacher Jim Muscarella attended the American Society of Engineering Education conference in Tampa to present on the PWHS engineering curriculum that's been more than a dozen years in the making. However, Mr. Muscarella had a higher goal in mind and left Florida as a key member of an exclusive pilot program working to establish national standardized high school courses in engineering through an initiative called e4usa (Engineering for US All).

Consensus for First-of-its-Kind Pre-College Engineering Course
Jan 16, 2019In a sustained effort to further Engineering for US All (e4usa), a pilot program funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and led by the University of Maryland (UMD), approximately 140 representatives from more than 100 high schools, colleges, and universities convened at the e4usa Engineering Curriculum Workshop in College Park, Maryland, December 10–12. The workshop provided an opportunity for preschool through 12th grade (P–12) engineering education stakeholders to partner with the e4usa team to develop the first national standardized high school course in engineering.

UMD to Lead Milestone NSF High School Engineering Pilot Course
Oct 1, 2018With a nearly $4 million grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF), the University of Maryland will lead a first-of-its-kind nationwide pre-college course on engineering principles and design. The pilot program, entitled Engineering for US All (e4usa), will test the effectiveness of a standardized educational curriculum across multiple states. The course is intended to lead to an eventual pathway for high school students to earn college credit.