Engineering a High School Engineering Program in LA

When I first came across a job posting for Iridescent I thought ‘how cool is that?’ It was exactly what I was and have been looking for most of my career. It seems like such a simple concept really – If you want to teach people about engineering, engineers are the best people for the job!

I am a former aerospace engineer who is passionate about communicating science and engineering to the public and children so Iridescent was the perfect fit for me. My job was to create a high school program in South LA to teach high school students about engineering. Basically, I get paid to do what I’m most passionate about.

Often programs function to encourage kids to be excited about engineering and pursuing it as a career while others focus solely on academic prep. I believe that both are vital. It is not possible for Iridescent to do both – at this point at least – we are more of the get kids excited about engineering variety. What we can do is try to make connections for our students to other programs in the area that do focus on preparing students academically. We can also help make engineering more accessible and instill them with confidence that they can succeed in a science or engineering career.