Team PA's STEM Initiative supports programs like the Real World Design Challenge, which perpetuate the STEM disciplines. Here, the Team of Eagle One from Cumberland Valley High School work on their RWDC project.

Utilizing and developing young minds to help to find solutions to problems facing industry in a high school setting is the goal of the Real World Design Challenge (RWDC).

That’s why the Pennsylvania STEM Initiative, a joint venture of Team Pennsylvania Foundation and the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is the primary sponsor of RWDC, a cutting-edge national program that encourages high school students to develop real-world solutions to modern engineering challenges.

Team Pennsylvania believes presenting high school students the opportunity to experience real world engineering challenges will hopefully whet their appetites and encourage many of them to pursue a career in a STEM-related field. The program is also a great building block for a student’s resume as they look to enter college and the workforce.

The RWDC provides Pennsylvania high school students the opportunity to research and find solutions to real world problems in a competition against their counterparts in schools from 25 states and the District of Columbia.

The past two years, the “Eagle One” team from Cumberland Valley High School, Cumberland County, has represented Pennsylvania in the national competition in Washington, D.C.

To earn the honor of competing nationally, 43 PA high school teams had to address fuel efficiency in aviation through the design and optimization of a business jet tail for specified cruise conditions. For the national competition, the teams optimized both the airplane’s tail and wing.

Students give numerous hours of their time over several months to research and design their team project for the state competition. However, only a few weeks are granted to prepare for the national competition, further challenging the students to address these issues within a relatively short amount of time.

“The Real World Design Challenge (RWDC) provided my students the opportunity to work on an engineering challenge in a team environment,” said instructor Michael Flowers. “The students utilized engineering software to develop their solution, applied the lessons of their science and math classes to the technical problems that are being faced in the workplace, and generated a design notebook with an oral presentation that demonstrate the value of their solution. They truly gained the experience of what it’s like to be an engineer.”