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ZOARVILLE Rufus the robotic dog was one of the stars of a Project Lead The Way showcase held Friday at Tuscarawas Valley High School.

Normally, such showcases are community events, but it wasn't possible this year because of the COVID-19 pandemic. So instructor Paul Dunlap decided to stage an informal one for staff and students.

"I felt my students deserved to have the ability to present their concepts, ideas and projects to the community," he said.

Students developed a variety of projects for the showcase.

"My seniors have knocked it out of the park this year," Dunlap noted. "They created a robotic dog, a drone factory that builds and assembles drones from the milling state all the way through laser engraving to it takes off. My other students also created a pencil sorting factory, which sorts them based on color."

Tuscarawas Valley has offered Project Lead The Way classes for the past 12 years.

According to the Project Lead the Way website, the programhelps "students to develop in-demand, transportable knowledge and skills through pathways in computer science, engineeringand biomedical science."

Tuscarawas Valley offers the classes all the way down to kindergarten.

"So my daughter, who's a kindergartner, is learning how to program virtual robots. She absolutely loves it." Dunlap said.

At this year's showcase, the guest judges were six former Tuscarawas Valley students who are now studying engineering in college. They are Clint Spillman, Jake Rothenstein, Randall Winkhart, Gavin Perkowski and Jonathan Rennicker, all students at the University of Akron, and Seth Ramsey, a student at the Ohio State University.

They were all impressed with the projects they saw.

"Every year it seems like they improve on what the previous class did, and I didn't think that was possible," said Spillman, who is in his junior year at Akron. "They've blown us out of the water with the stuff they do. And I thought the stuffwe were doing was advanced, but this is even more advanced."

Added Rennicker, "I'm just in awe. They're amazing, very impressive that they're doing this in high school."

Rennicker, who is in his first year at Akron, said the Project Lead The Way classes at Tuscarawas Valley are way ahead of anything he's doing in college.

Some of the classes Spillman took at Tuscarawas Valley he retook in college, and they were exactly the same.

"I was very prepared, and it just made it so much easier to get through," he said. "You become a leader just because you can help everyone else in the class. They're so surprised with what you've done in high school."

He added that he was impressed by the robotic dog and how the students had programmed it.

Dunlap said he was fortunate to have his former students come back as judges.

"They all got a hold of me to come back, not the other way around," he said. "As soon as they hear something's going on, they want to come back and participate."

See the article here:

Tusky Valley students 'knock it out of the park' with engineering projects - New Philadelphia Times Reporter