Rock Hill's Coburn on WBTW TV

By Aisha Khan
WBTW Reporter
Published: September 14, 2009

A new program to prepare students for college and potential engineering careers will be coming to Horry County Schools pretty soon.

Teacher of the year Bryan Coburn is behind the initiative “Project Lead the Way,” which he said is designed to help schools give students the knowledge they need to excel in high tech fields.

“We need to bring up the rigor in the state of South Carolina across the board and when we do in any way possible that’s wonderful,” said Coburn, “we have a lot of manufacturing and two year degree opportunities for our students that this program supports because not all kids are going to want to get a four year engineer degree but a two year engineering degree for a manufacturing base and how students can use those skills is very valuable.“

Coburn says right now the program is being presented to Horry County School District. He says it needs money to be implemented in local high schools so that students can receive an in-depth, hands-on knowledge of engineering and technology-based careers. The program should be avialble to students within in the next two years he said.

Coburn made his first stop at Conway High School Monday morning to explain the benefits of the program.

High school junior Jagjit Singh said he might be young but it’s not too soon to decide that he’s going to be an engineer.

“I wanted to take this engineering class because I think it’s the future of tomorrow,“ said Singh, “I think that the program would make it better because students could know how the job world is out there and they could know what it’s like to be in engineering and how it feels.“

Tenth grader Tamara Thompson said she always wanted to be an engineer and said that the stereotype of only boys excelling in such a rigorous field shouldn’t be the case anymore.

“I feel like it’s important for girls to be able to do stuff that boys can do, I mean it’s just fun so why should girls not do it,“ Thompson said.

Coburn said that South Carolina is one of the top states to have one hundred schools running the program.