Bishop Noll students now have the ability to explore the engineering field more in depth with the addition of the new Principles to Engineering course.

    This year Bishop Noll welcomes a new addition to its expanding Science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) programs by introducing a new Principles to Engineering course. Bishop Noll alum, Dr. Don Gray has returned to teach the course. Dr. Gray attended Purdue Calumet where he earned his Bachelor’s Degree in electrical engineering. He then studied at the University of Notre Dame where he gained his Master’s and PhD degrees in Electrical Engineering.

     Dr. Gray has taught classes at Notre Dame University, Purdue West Lafayette, Seton Academy, and is currently a part of the teaching staff at Purdue Northwest. He is also teaching at an overseas university and has worked on a wide variety of projects for companies like John Deere, Caterpillar and Argonne Laboratory.

    “I am ever so grateful to the faculty I had at Bishop Noll who helped me become who I am today,” says Dr. Gray.

    In the class, students will be exposed to a variety of engineering fields. These fields range from civil, mechanical, electrical, and computer. The class will do a number of projects this first semester including designing a life boat, building electrical circuit boards, and designing  other electrical devices.

    “He’s giving us options on what we want to learn based off of the wide range of engineering fields because each is so dense,” says Mayra Pena a senior in the class.

      These projects combined with a heavier workload will give the students a thorough understanding of engineering.

Their class work is made up of labs, worksheets, and Matlab computer programming. The class is only offered during 5th hour and during ccp during the school week.

    Being his first time teaching this type of course at a high school level, Gray is very optimistic about this year. He hopes to open the eyes to high school students and show them that engineering can be interesting and fun. Dr. Gray’s goal is to teach students new material in engineering and teach them how their science and math courses will relate to that material.

    “This is the first time this course of being offered at Bishop Noll and I expect that both the students and myself will be learning a lot,” he says.