Throughout their time at Wake STEM Early College High School, students complete projects with real-world applications, secure internships to broaden their educational horizons, attend guest lectures on the Grand Challenges of Engineering and gain mentors who will support them as they achieve their goals. Faculty, students and staff in the College of Education are critical to the Wake STEM Early College High School experience and can provide support in the following ways.
Grade Level Projects
Grade level projects are multidisciplinary projects where students collaboratively master core standards through rigorous, real-world culminating assignments.
Previous Examples
Nuclear Proliferation – UN debate on widespread sharing of Nuclear Power technology.
One Health Project – Students design a wearable device.
Access to Clean Water Project
Grand Challenges – Students prepare and teach key aspects of one of the Grand Challenges of Engineering to kindergarteners at Brentwood Elementary.
The Early College is looking for undergraduate and graduate students who would be interested in supporting the work of our student teams as they complete their grade level projects. They would do so by reviewing rubrics, brainstorming, asking questions and providing feedback.
Each year, Wake STEM Early College seniors are asked to secure internships as a part of their educational experience. In their internships, students gain experience by taking on a responsible role as a worker in a company or organization and reflecting on what they learned while in the workplace. The internship program is a supplement to formal classroom instruction. Its intent is to significantly add to the vitality of the instructional program and to impact the courses that a student has taken or will take. Internships are geared for older students such as juniors, seniors and super seniors and must be at least 135 hours.
The Early College is looking for opportunities for high school students to work in various NC State lab settings. If you are able to provide an internship experience to Wake STEM Early College High School, please let us know.
Our grade level projects center around the Grand Challenges of Engineering. We are seeking guest speakers with expertise in these areas to speak to the students about a Grand Challenge, the importance of taking on work related to this challenge and what cutting edge solutions experts are currently investigating. If you are a professor with expertise in one or more of the Grand Challenges and would like to be a guest speaker, please contact us.
One of the original charters of Wake STEM Early College is to support students who will be in the first generation of their family to attend college. One way we support first-generation students is through building mentor/mentee relationships between our students and first-generation students at NC State University. If you are a first-generation NC State student who is interested in being a mentor, please reach out to us.