Engineering Program Builds Road To College

Six of the 26 graduates at Wheaton High are female, and all but three are minority.

That three female graduates will attend Cornell is "indeed unusual," said W. Kent Fuchs, dean of engineering at the university, in an e-mail. He noted that the university had "purposefully reached out to these students," offering them a combined $494,000 in scholarships.

Avelar grew up in Wheaton and met Begazo, her future Cornell classmate, at El Ingeniero one summer in middle school. She, too, liked "breaking things apart and figuring out how they work."

She chose Wheaton's engineering program from a list of three academies introduced at the school a few years ago. They are among dozens of such programs that have sprouted at the region's high schools, each promoting some academic specialty as a way to better define the school, to link studies to college and careers and to promote small, specialized learning communities among the students.

Such programs vary in quality, and some ultimately fail. Wheaton administrators purposefully chose an established brand. Students take one or two elective engineering courses each year, along with advanced math and science courses and other honors or Advanced Placement offerings. Stroup's students designed bridges on computers, worked with robots and visited a Harley-Davidson plant in Pennsylvania, along with an eager retinue of parent chaperones, to see how motorcycles are built.

"We wanted to offer an academy where there's jobs out there," Stroup said. "Some of them have these wonderful-sounding academies, but where are the jobs?"

His graduates are likely to earn $50,000 a year or more as entry-level engineers if they stay the course -- a selling point for the students of Wheaton High, two-fifths of whom qualify for subsidized meals.

Senior Richard Mancco, 18, said his father, who repairs cars, was prepared to refinance the family home to cover the tuition at MIT until the school came through with a $151,000 scholarship. Mancco, who chose MIT over Harvard, wasn't even expecting to get in. Now he plans for graduate school.

"Maybe owning my own company," he said. "Time will decide."