Dist. 211 tech program wins national recognition

Late last spring, High School District 211's Applied Technology Department receive word through state officials that all five district high schools earned national recognition as schools of excellence for the implementation of its "Project Lead the Way" (PLTW) engineering program.

By completing the certification process, students enrolled in the program are now eligible to earn college credit through agreements for courses they take in District 211 at Iowa, Duke, Purdue, Penn State and Northern Illinois, as well as many other colleges and universities throughout the country. According to Eric LeBlanc, Conant High School Applied Technology Department chairman, certification of all five buildings within a district at one time is nearly unprecedented, and is the result of hard work by many individuals on many different levels.

Building team leaders for PLTW that were instrumental in the certification process were: Mark Hibner and Alex Larson (Palatine High School), Paul Hardy and Mike Karasch (Fremd High School), Bruce Rucks and Dave Karling (Schaumburg High School), Al Hausfeld and Wayne Oras (Hoffman Estates High School), Peter Goss and Eric LeBlanc (Conant High School), and Otis Price (District 211 Director of Student Career Development).