Puget Sound Engineering Council

Emily Yim, Washington Alliance for Better Schools

2019 Award Recipient

Nominated by the Structural Engineers Association of Washington

Emily Yim
Washington Alliance for Better Schools

Emily Yim, Executive Director of the Washington Alliance for Better Schools (WABS), has been selected as the recipient of the 2019 K-12 STEM Engineering Teacher of the Year in recognition of her many contributions to the STEM education of K-12 students.  WABS is a collaborative of eleven school districts that helps over a quarter million students graduate career and college ready.  To achieve its mission, WABS seeks to close achievement and opportunity gaps in historically underrepresented populations and increase academic achievement and career readiness for STEM fields.

As the visionary leader of WABS, she led the expansion of the After School STEM Academy program, which currently serves over 4,700 students every year.  The program is an engaging, hands-on STEM expanded learning opportunity for elementary and middle school students facilitated by industry volunteers to build awareness of STEM careers and career pathways.  During each session, STEM industry professionals lead hour-long small group activities with students to reinforce engineering concepts, share their workplace experiences, and highlight career pathways.

She was also instrumental in establishing a new program called Family STEM Night for students and families.  The program engages culturally diverse students and their multi-generational families in a five-week course of evening hands-on STEM activities to broaden understanding of career pathways and support family engagement. Conducted by industry volunteers, the program works to build opportunity for students of color and students who do not speak English as their first language.  By taking a holistic approach to exposing students and their families to STEM careers, the program empowers families to become engaged in their children’s education.

Elana Slagle, Starfish Education

2018 Award Recipient

Elana Slagle
Starfish Education

Nominated by the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics

Elana Slagle, Starfish Education, has been selected as the recipient of the 2018 K-12 STEM Engineering Teacher of the Year in recognition of her many contributions to the education of K-12 students.  She works with K-12 schools to develop and test new STEM curricula and provides professional development for Puget Sound area teachers on how to incorporate STEM into their daily lessons.

She is involved with four specific activities that demonstrate exceptional performance in improving K-12 STEM education.  They are Lindbergh Electric Airplane Flight (LEAF) STEM Challenge, curriculum development for the Washington Informal Science Education (WISE) Consortium, serving on the Champion’s Board for the National Girls Collaborative Project (NGCP), and serving on the Educational Advisory Board for the Museum of Flight.  The LEAF STEM Challenge is an aircraft design competition for junior high and high school students.  They are given an electric motor and design constraints, and then asked to design an electric airplane to compete against other teams.  The student teams are required to document their work, present to a panel of judges, and demonstrate the capability of their airplanes to carry a payload.

The WISE curriculum for grade school students requires the students to design and build straw rockets.  These students then conduct a series of rocket launches to track the impact of different design features (size, weight, thrust, etc.) and plot the results.  The NGCP provides a math-centered cryptography project that helps the girls use and refine math skills and identify potential STEM careers by teaching them how to make, break, and decipher codes.

She is an active Educator Associate of AIAA and has served as the National STEM Chair.  She received the National Chairman’s Award for her work in STEM education in 2014.

Noah Crofoot, Lynnwood High School

Noah Crofoot
Lynnwood High School

2017 Award Recipient

Nominated by the American Society of Civil Engineers

Noah Crofoot, Lynnwood High School, has been selected as the recipient of the 2017 K-12 STEM Engineering Teacher of the Year in recognition of his many contributions to the education of K-12 students by showing them about science and exciting careers in engineering. A graduate of Western Washington University, he employs hands-on learning experiences for his physics students.  He has adopted inquiry-based laboratory exercises and conceptual teaching models.  His students annually compete in the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) Popsicle Stick Bridge Building Competition.  He makes all of his students build their own bridges and holds a class competition to select the top students to participate in the ASCE competition.  In this way, each student must design and build a bridge. As part of the competition, engineers are invited to come to the school and talk to his students about careers in engineering.

Working with another teacher, he started a Technology Student Association to create out of class opportunities for students to continue learning and growing in technology fields.  Students are required to go out and make real measurements and analyze real situations.  One example was a requirement to determine the ideal length of mud flaps for semi-trucks.  His required students to use kinematics to calculate the maximum angle a water droplet could leave a tire and not hit the car behind.

Many of his students are considering career options, and he routinely invites engineers into his classroom to inform students what it is like to be an engineer.