After taking the Catapult Engineering Academy courses in high school, I served as a Catapult Teaching Assistant (TA) while attending Auburn University where I majored in Mechanical Engineering and minored in Business. Having worked with public, private, and home school students through this program, I can unequivocally say that Catapult and its TA’s prioritize the success of each student and are able deliver the content, answer questions, and provide feedback that allow all students to grow. This program is a great way to get early experience with STEM topics and will certainly accelerate the academic and professional career of its participants. Being well-prepared coming out of high school enabled me to make the most of opportunities available while at Auburn. I was a Trumpet Section Leader in the AU Marching Band, interned at Southern Company, Co-oped at Georgia Pacific, and worked in an undergraduate research lab (and yes, I still managed to have a life). I've spent the last 2.5 years working for Frito-Lay as a Manufacturing Manager leading cross functional teams of 30-120+ in the production of billion dollar brands like Lays, Cheetos, Doritos, etc. This fall I'm excited to be attending the Kellogg School of Management as I pursue my MBA.

Having modeling software like SolidWorks in my skill set walking into college gave me a significant advantage over my peers who came into our engineering curriculum with no prior training. Both MATLAB and SolidWorks were programs that I used in my college classes, but even more importantly, the effect of knowing how to use these tools changed the way I approached learning. As a civil engineering major, I used the content from the Catapult curriculum daily. Not only was I more equipped for success in college than those in my cohort, I was more polished and confident when entering the workforce upon graduation. I owe much of my success today to the time and effort spent in high school by this incredible program. I am now a Senior Preconstruction Manager with Brasfield & Gorrie producing cost estimates, schedules, operational and logistics plans, and construction phasing assessments for projects between $5 million and $500 million.

Because of the engineering knowledge and concepts I gained through Catapult, I did not learn any new engineering concepts until I was a second semester sophomore. I was able to apply the skills I learned in high school every single semester in college, and I was able to help teach others who did not have the opportunity to gain engineering knowledge prior to college. Walking into my college classrooms with thorough knowledge of calculus-based physics, computer programming, and computer modeling was invaluable to me, and I carry these skills into the workplace as well. I recently completed a Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering with a minor in Mathematics at Mississippi State University. I am now a Research Mechanical Engineer at the Engineering Research and Development Center, a division of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. I am working in one of seven labs in the United States to perform research and prototyping for the army. I will specifically be working with artificial intelligence and missile defense in the Geotechnical and Structural Laboratory.

My name is Michael Culberson. I graduated high school in 2014 and then earned a Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering at Mississippi State University in 2019. I am now a Product Engineer with Honda Manufacturing of Alabama - a job I was offered 7 months before graduating. Most students don't get the opportunity to learn or be exposed to the subjects taught in the Catapult courses until college. As the other students in my first-year courses were trying to understand difficult subjects, I wasn't learning as much as being reminded of what I had already learned in the Catapult courses.

I'm a senior in Industrial Engineering at Mississippi State University. I'm also minoring in Mathematics and Global Engineering Leadership. My experience through Catapult has been invaluable. Thanks to what I learned in these courses, I often served as a tutor to my peers in our introductory engineering courses. The knowledge gained through the Engineering Academy also helped me succeed in non-technical courses such as English composition, technical writing, and public speaking.

I am Capt. William Huckeba of the USMC. I graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy with a Bachelor of Science in Aerospace Engineering, and I currently serve as a member of the Blue Angels as a C-130 “Fat Albert” Pilot. What I learned through the Catapult courses opened my eyes to the vast array of opportunities available to me. The grounding in critical thinking and exposure to the engineering thought process paid dividends in my college and professional career.

The same material I learned in the Catapult courses showed up in my college classes and to have learned it beforehand made a lot of my college experience so much easier. If given the opportunity to take these courses again I would not think twice. This experience has truly been a blessing for my family and me. As a result of my preparation in high school, I had the opportunity to work as an engineering apprentice for Kamtek Cosma International from the time I graduated high school until I earned a Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering from UAB. I'm now a Process/Quality Engineer for Kamtek, and I'm currently pursuing a Master's degree in Informational Engineering Management.

After graduating from The University of Alabama with a degree in Electrical Engineering, I worked as a test engineer in substations for Alabama Power for two years. Now, I am using my passion for STEM to engage students in the classroom as an upper school mathematics teacher and assistant robotics coach at Darlington School. As a math teacher, I sometimes hear, “When will I ever use this?” I know, from my experience as a student in the Engineering Academy, Catapult has been designed for students to instead eagerly wonder, “How soon will I get to use this?”

I am a sophomore in Materials Science & Engineering at Arizona State University. I can say from firsthand experience that the Catapult curriculum is an invaluable foundation for students entering into university engineering programs! In high school, I took the courses offered through Catapult Engineering Academy. Ideveloped skills in SolidWorks, Microsoft Excel, technical writing, and presentation design and delivery--all of which prepared me to thrive as a learner and leader in the Arizona State engineering community.

I'm Oakley Prell, a Mechanical Engineering student at the University of Alabama where I'm also part of the STEM Path to the MBA program. My experience with Catapult Engineering Academy made a tremendous difference for me in developing confidence in my technical and communication skills before college. As a freshman in college, I was able to get heavily involved in research and extracurricular projects which led to multiple internship offers. These opportunities were available because I had already developed the hard skills to deliver valuable work, and the soft skills to effectively communicate it.

I recently finished a Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Texas at Austin and now work as a Research Engineer at Shell New Energies. I would recommend these courses to some of my colleagues today, and I would certainly recommend them to high schoolers who want to be life-long problem-solvers and excel in the “real world” in addition to the classroom. Many of the skills I learned in the Engineering Academy have proven invaluable in the work I do as an engineer today. For one, the foundation of programming skills I was able to build during high school set me ahead of my peers in college, which gave me time to seek out and learn new skills. As a result, I can code in several languages now and build models every day that hold many of the fundamental building blocks that I learned about in high school.

As an electrical engineering student, I can see how the time I spent in college-level courses during high school paid great dividends in college. Catapult gives great opportunities for students to obtain a variety of skills. The skills I learned from the Engineering Computations course not only helped me achieve top grades in my classes but also have the ability to help my peers.