Willamette High School students in the Industry & Engineering pathway participate in electric car races. The cars are built entirely by them from scratch.
Willamette High School’s industry and engineering pathway is one of the school’s most popular pathways due to the massive project of building a rally racecar. Students begin building these cars in the second semester of the school year.Mike Hodgert teaches two “industry and engineering” courses, one for beginners and another for advanced students. “We start by teaching them how to build these cars to scale with legos. If I can’t trust them to build something with little pieces of plastic, then I can’t turn them loose in a shop without the proper knowledge of how to use it or what they are building.”Weston Davis, 17, hollows out a piece of metal, creating one of the spacers he will need when he puts together his car’s steering system.Jacob Fisk, 17, is cautious after cutting a piece of metal piping for his steering system; utilizing a grindstone to remove razor edges is an important in-between step that Mike Hodgert teaches his students when cutting metal.Mike Hodgert when asked how much assistance he needs to provide students: “The kids take this very seriously. They want to race, and they want to win. My job is not to teach them how to win a race; it’s my job to teach them the concepts of how to build a car. I teach them how to use equipment, and I help them problem solve, but I never do it for them. It’s up to them to build a racecar, and it’s up to them to make one that’s fast enough to win a race.”
