Food dispensers for the disabled, emergency bathroom locks, new ways to charge phones and automatic lacrosse stick wrappers: all are innovations not designed in Silicon Valley but in Rockville High School through the capstone Engineering Design and Development (EDD) course.

In the Project Lead the Way (PLTW) program, students take EDD their senior year, after completing the four engineering courses before it, making the students in the program experienced and invested in engineering.

Engineering Academy Coordinator Gale Wolf said, “The best thing about EDD is that they get to take everything they have learned, practice it and come up with their own problems that they think are important.”

Students start by coming up with a problem that they can find a solution for, and for most students, this is the hardest part of their project. After the problem is identified, students begin designing and making prototypes for their design, then start gaining experience in the field that they choose.

“Some of them have gotten involved in the same types of classes in college with a bit of a background, and they know where to go to start solving a problem,” Wolf said.

Students make inventions for a wide range of purposes, from enhancing the efficiency of an everyday task, to engineering a solution for a pressing problem. The course gives students flexibility to make a creative invention, but gives them an organized process to ensure that their final product is a success.

Senior Krystal Claggett said, “I have been waiting for EDD this whole time because we get to choose our own projects, our partners, and we get to make our own time frame.”

Throughout the year, students become part of the world of innovation, being part of the drive for the newest ideas and latest breakthroughs that this generation will produce. For some student’s projects, a similar design comes out commercially at the same time they are designing it, while for others, their projects are so innovative that they have not yet been introduced.

Claggett said, “My partner Abby Noll has a sister with Prader-Willi Syndrome, a condition that causes a problem with the hypothalamus [the body part that regulates appetite], preventing people from being able to control their eating habits, and we are making a solution for not only her, but potentially everyone that has the syndrome.”

This class is unique from the other engineering classes in that it is not just memorizing formulas and understanding laws of physics, but it shows students how to bring all their skills into something that they are passionate about: their own creation.

Senior John Wartonick said, “This year is the first year that we get to test out the 3D printer to make a prototype of our design. We use the engineering design process naturally, and its cool to see that the process actually applies to real situations.”

Students believe that the most gratifying part of the course is that at the end of the year, students can take all of their engineering education from their previous four years and get to apply their knowledge to something that they care about. In the engineering program, this class proves that the best things are saved for last.