Welcome to "Nerd Heaven", Helping Students Build Their Futures

On this episode of the Tech Times podcast we talk all things engineering with Instructor Kim Bonifield. Learn how we prepare students for success and hear from her student Carlos about what makes the program unique.

Transcript

Announcer: From Tulsa Tech, helping you make your own path with insights and information about the world of career training, the Tech Times Podcast starts right now. 

Ryan Williams (Host): Hey, everyone. Welcome to the Tech Times podcast. I'm your host, Ryan Williams. Today we're shining the light on our original campus, the Lemley Memorial Campus, and our pre-engineering advanced program.

Ryan Williams (Host): Unlike many of our programs, students in our pre-engineering program are typically gonna continue their education in either college or the military. Joining us to talk about this is one of our pre-engineering instructors, Ms. Kim Bonfield. Welcome to the podcast. 

Kim Bonifield: Thanks for having me. 

Ryan Williams (Host): So, I'm curious, do you have previous industry experience in engineering?

Kim Bonifield: My background is in mathematics and computer science. So I have taught, , both high school and college level computer science and mathematics for the last 30 some years. 

Ryan Williams (Host): So what brought you to Tulsa Tech and the pre-engineering program itself as maybe as opposed to a more traditional classroom?

Kim Bonifield: So I was originally hired, this is my 14th year at Tulsa Tech. I was originally hired as an academic center math specialist at Lemley campus. They had me teach a couple of math courses at the pre-engineering. Section, which I did for two years, and then after that was hired to be a full-time instructor .

Kim Bonifield: On this campus. 

Ryan Williams (Host): That's fun. Yeah. Yeah. 

Kim Bonifield: And then I've done the training for several pre-engineering courses and I teach, I have over the years, taught three of those and then all the math courses that we've had. 

Ryan Williams (Host): What got you hooked in the field? Teaching, engineering? 

Kim Bonifield: Teaching is, , I love being able to share my.

Kim Bonifield: Passion for a subject for learning. , With the students that I come in contact with, , I have over the years developed a lot of skills to be able to teach just about anything to anyone. 

Ryan Williams (Host): Oh, wow. You could even help me in some math skills.

Kim Bonifield: Absolutely.

Ryan Williams (Host): Oh dear.

Kim Bonifield: Absolutely. Yeah. I get to work at a place where I play with robots and do, , robotic arms, robots that move AGVs,, milling machines, 3D printers.

Kim Bonifield: I mean, it's a fantastic job. 

Ryan Williams (Host): Lot of toys. , Well let's dive right into the program. You mentioned robotics. When someone hears pre-engineering, they might think of something like advanced math or those robotics competitions. What are students really engaged in day to day? 

Kim Bonifield: What we do here at pre-engineering is we provide opportunities for students to explore this field to see if this is something they really wanna do.

Kim Bonifield: Recently there was a, , the Tulsa Engineering Foundation said that Oklahoma is right now facing a shortage of 3000 engineers. That's just Oklahoma with 250 every year being added to that. And so what we do here, even though we are. Sending kids off to college as opposed to sending them to industry first is that engineering is a difficult course of study and so what we're trying to do is prepare students and give them tools so that they can be successful in that.

Kim Bonifield: , Our advisory committee, which is made up of counselors, , people from engineering departments all over the, all over Oklahoma. And then also engineers tell us, we will take every student you can give us because we know that they are going to be well prepared when we get them. 

Ryan Williams (Host): It really gets 'em, , prepared for the rigor of college and everything like that too, right?

Kim Bonifield: Yes. Absolutely.

Ryan Williams (Host): Exploration throughout all the skills. 

Kim Bonifield: Yeah. Whether they go into pre-engineering or not. The skills that they learn here, the experiences that they have here, prepare them for pretty much any career that you would wanna be in. 

Ryan Williams (Host): Career tech is really great at hands-on learning.

Ryan Williams (Host): So what kind of projects, , or hands-on experiences tend to excite students the most? How do you bridge that gap between theory and hands-on practice? 

Kim Bonifield: Well, we are project based, so all of our pre-engineering courses, , have all of them have hands-on experience. 

Ryan Williams (Host): That's cool. 

Kim Bonifield: So we are sitting in an introduction to engineering design classroom, and right now students behind me are on computers learning about computer aided design using Fusion 360.

Kim Bonifield: , Later on in this course, we will be, they will be designing things. They can 3D print on my 3D printers that are here in the room. The other course that I teach, , right now is advanced, , computer. Integrated manufacturing. And that's the course where we do industrial, , engineering, industrial engineering, and a little mechanical.

Kim Bonifield: And so they make, using VEX robotics, they make, they take some of the other skills that they've learned in the basic courses and they make automated guided vehicles. They make factories, , and they work in teams to design and. Create, construct and program. 

Kim Bonifield: Then later on we introduce robotic arms, , simple ones, and I have some that are not quite so simple and they are able to incorporate those into a factory.

Kim Bonifield: And they have to design and work together in groups. This is all hands on. 

Kim Bonifield: And so, , the test quote tests that we have in a pre-engineering course tend to be projects and they have to demonstrate through their use of projects that they understand. The material 

Ryan Williams (Host): and be able to work in a team setting and 

Kim Bonifield: Absolutely. Communication. , We work on soft skills. We work on team management. We give students the opportunity to lead their teams if they want to. , And so almost everything we do in a pre-engineering course is going to be, , hands. Hands-on. 

Ryan Williams (Host): Do you find that students really, , clamor to the exploration of all of the different fields of engineering here so that they know kind of what they're doing as they get into whether they go to college for this or not?

Kim Bonifield: Yeah. 

Ryan Williams (Host): Yeah. 

Kim Bonifield: So sometimes students come in and they already know. 

Ryan Williams (Host): Oh wow. 

Kim Bonifield: They already know what they wanna do. They wanna go mechanical or they wanna do aerospace or they wanna do civil. 

Ryan Williams (Host): How do you think students know that at 15, 16 years old? 

Kim Bonifield: Well, some, sometimes they have family members that are engineers or, or an uncle.

Kim Bonifield: I hear that a lot. And so they, they are curious about it and they wanna come and look and see. , And once they get here, they're hooked. . I mean, we call this place nerd heaven because. Um, you can explore and do so many incredible things that you would not have the opportunity in high school to do anywhere else.

Ryan Williams (Host): The engineering engineering world is evolving, , with automation, ai, artificial intelligence. It's, it's a fast moving landscape. So how do you keep the program aligned with current engineering trends? 

Kim Bonifield: That is a challenge. . That is a challenge. , But we do have some leeway in our curriculum. We can update our curriculum at any time.

Kim Bonifield: We need to add something like a module with, for instance, if I'm doing a factory and I want to add drones, we have drones. So we can actually add that into the curriculum. AI right now is, we are at the beginning of it. , But we are starting to work with it and, and. Who knows. I think the best thing you can do for a student is teach them critical thinking skills and the ability to learn for the, find out how to learn for yourself.

Kim Bonifield: I Don't stand at the front of the room and lecture. That is not how that goes. They are told Here is a project, here are the. Requirements. Now go make it happen. Be creative, do this, do that. Here's a robot. I don't teach them how to use the robot. Come here and and play with the robot. Here are the resources you might need, but go figure it out.

Kim Bonifield: And those kinds of skills are hugely needed in the workforce and in just in general. 

Ryan Williams (Host): I think some of those advisory committee members, , people in industry that help you guys help with guide some of that curriculum as well when they're not 

Kim Bonifield: Yes, yes. Yeah. And, and a lot of the time they're saying, you're doing it. You're doing it. What are the kinds of things we need to work on? They tell us. We're like, we got that. We're working on communications, we're working on soft skills. We're working on the ability to, . Learn for yourself and, and not depend on someone to feed you information. 

Ryan Williams (Host): You mentioned it before with some of the critical thinking and soft skills, but what are, what are some of the skills that, like technical and personal, that are most valuable in an engineering environment?

Kim Bonifield: The engineers that, that come to the advisory that are on our advisory committee say communication, being able to work in a group. Being able to communicate your ideas, being able to communicate solutions, and then being able to work in a team in such a way that you can make those goals happen. , And over and over, that's what they say.

Kim Bonifield: And so, and being able to present, you know, we. We do, , often we have opportunities for students to present to their classmates. We did it here like the second day of school. 

Ryan Williams (Host): Oh, wow. 

Kim Bonifield: Being able to stand up in front, introduce yourself, use the correct name, being able to, , communicate with each other. , One of our, at the, at stem here, we have, , a senior level capstone course.

Kim Bonifield: And what the students do in that course, they're seniors, they take the entire design. Process go from beginning to end. They make, they have a problem, they have a solution, they make a prototype. They, have to test it, they have to do, you know, and maintain all the documentation. And then the very last thing they do is they stand up in front of the entire school and present their project as a team.

Ryan Williams (Host): We've seen some pretty creative inventions, , and prototypes. It is through those projects. 

Kim Bonifield: Crazy. And we have had, we've had several that got patents.

Ryan Williams (Host): Oh, really? 

Kim Bonifield: Yeah.

Kim Bonifield: That they developed something somebody wanted to buy later on.

Ryan Williams (Host): That's, that's so fun. 

Kim Bonifield: It is, it's a great thing. And we've got kids who, , we had a, we had a kid that came here and did not speak, and by the time he did the final senior project, he was standing up in front of the entire school in a suit presenting his designs.

Kim Bonifield: I mean, it's just, when you find the place that really makes you passionate about what you're doing, you gotta do, 

Ryan Williams (Host): I was gonna ask about nerd heaven and, and how, how you get those. Students to get up in front of their classmates and speak. In a lot of cases, they're, I would guess they're introverts. 

Kim Bonifield: Oh gosh, yes.

Ryan Williams (Host): So how do you encourage them to, , make that leap? 

Kim Bonifield: Well, we just provide opportunities and support. Seriously. That's all we do. And what you'll find is even if a person is introverted, if they're very passionate about what they care about. They'll talk. And they'll want to communicate that. 

Kim Bonifield: And I feel that way about this program. I mean, I am, I am passionate. You should see me on tours, but you will see the kid that walks sees what we have here and your light and their parents will be like, oh my gosh, we didn't know there was a place like this. And they blossom. 

Ryan Williams (Host): Speaking of your, program tours, what would you say to a student that's looking at the program and considering it?

Kim Bonifield: Well, I'll tell you how we do tours. We, we generally go over the things that we offer and then we talk about, I always ask them, what are you interested in? What are some of the things you're interested in? And then once I start to show them all of the things that are available, like. The 3D printing and the robotics and all of that, you can just see their eyes light up because some of these kids have 3D printers at home.

Kim Bonifield: Already, and they have not been able to find a place like this that actually lets them explore the things they're really interested in. 

Kim Bonifield: And so you can tell right away that they are. Sometimes you'll get, I'll get like eighth grade tours will come through and I am very quick to say, if this is not the program you want.

Kim Bonifield: Great. There's a bunch others find, get that course catalog out, figure out which one makes you passionate and get in that program. It will change your life, and I truly believe that. 

Ryan Williams (Host): If parents or school counselors asked you why this pathway matters, how would you answer that? 

Kim Bonifield: Well, Tulsa Tech is in the business of career preparation.

Kim Bonifield: And as I said before, we have a serious shortage of students who are ready to take on the heavy curriculum of an engineering degree and for students who want to be engineers from all backgrounds. This is one of the best opport opportunities to get a leg up. Our students in college, they kind of pal around together, but they already know how to do things.

Kim Bonifield: Yeah. They're teaching their fellow students how to do things. They learned in high school. 

Ryan Williams (Host): It's a real competitive advantage to come here. 

Kim Bonifield: Absolutely. It makes a huge difference. 

Ryan Williams (Host): Wow. That's great. Well, thanks Kim. We're gonna take a quick break. When we come back, we're gonna take a look at the program from the other side of the desk and chat with one of your students.

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Ryan Williams (Host): Okay, we are back. We're chatting all things pre-engineering today, and we're excited to be joined by , one of Ms. Bonifield's students. , We're joined by Carlos, who's a broken Arrow high school student in the pre-engineering program here at Tulsa Tech. Welcome, Carlos. Good morning.

Ryan Williams (Host): Thank you for having me. It's a pleasure to be here. So what made you choose ultimately the pre-engineering program? Obviously you kind of decided to come here maybe your sophomore year. 

Carlos (Student): Yeah, well, I actually started off in the engineering and the intro to engineering and principles of engineering at my home high school beforehand.

Carlos (Student): So I had to gone through a little bit of the Tulsa Tech curriculum before and that's what kind of encouraged me to join this program and continue the rest of my two years of high school here. And it's just been a great time ever since. 

Ryan Williams (Host): Very cool. What makes taking, , an engineering class at Tulsa Tech so unique?

Carlos (Student): It's the curriculum based, , projects like Ms. Bonfield mentioned, and it's really the connection that you build with not only the students here, but also the instructors. They're very passionate in their field and they're, , skilled professionals. They graduated in the respective sectors that they teach in, so.

Carlos (Student): They're very passionate, , to teach you the skills that you're gonna be learning. 

Ryan Williams (Host): How do you think this program differs from maybe a traditional high school path? 

Carlos (Student): Yeah, so, , I'm taking, , at the same time, I'm taking high school here in the afternoon and then I'm coming in the morning to Tulsa Tech and it's really a big switch, , every single day.

Carlos (Student): So the teachers at the high school. They have to deal with maybe at my high school, hundreds of students a day. While the teachers at Tulsa Tech, they are more focused on your individual needs and can help you individually, and that's kind of what boosts that advantage that you do. Coming here to Tulsa Tech, it's more so the connection and being able to interact one-on-one and be comfortable in the environment that you're in.

Ryan Williams (Host): So you really like the student to teacher ratios and having the teachers really be able to be engaged with you? 

Carlos (Student): Oh yeah. Oh, cool. That's a big factor. 

Ryan Williams (Host): What surprised you the most when you first walked into the classroom and lab? 

Carlos (Student): So when I walked into the classroom for the first time, it was more the amount of people that were actually interested in the sector that we're learning.

Carlos (Student): So even though I was in the pre-engineering classes at the high school. Sometimes the students were just getting introduced so they didn't have much experience or weren't very passionate. But again, just the students that were here already and committed to being in this program, they just showed, , the drive to learn and to keep pursuing that knowledge and education in the engineering sector that they want to go into.

Ryan Williams (Host): That's a great perspective given that we're a school of choice. You have to choose to come here. And so, yeah, they're all really engaged and passionate about what they're learning. , Has being in this program changed how you think about engineering careers at all? 

Carlos (Student): Oh yeah, definitely. So when I first joined this program, even though I did do the previous two years in the pre, in the pre-engineering parts of Tulsa Tech, I wasn't completely sure what specific engineering sector I would want to go into, but I had always been encouraged because a lot of my family members, like Ms.

Carlos (Student): Bonfield said, that's a lot of factor for students, their family members. Are either engineers or they know somebody that is. So I was very, , driven to kind of pursue that path in engineering, but I didn't know specifically what curated my taste. , I had competed in previous competitions with, , CTSO organization and architecture and that's kind of what encouraged me to be more leaning towards the civil engineering architecture side of engineering.

Carlos (Student): And that's what kind of pushed me to pursue this. Path in Tulsa Tech. And 

Ryan Williams (Host): you, you mentioned CTSOs, career tech student organizations. You're a state officer for Skills, USA, is that correct? 

Carlos (Student): Yes, I am. 

Ryan Williams (Host): Awesome. So what, what brought you to, , participate so heavily into our student organizations? 

Carlos (Student): Yeah, so as I mentioned before, I started as a freshman in TSA Technology student association, and I competed in the architectural design competition with a teammate.

Carlos (Student): And we ended up getting first place at State and super 

Ryan Williams (Host): awesome. 

Carlos (Student): Yeah, it was great. And we went on to compete in Louisville, Kentucky, , at Nationals and we semi-finalists there. And then we went on to do it the next year again, , as a sophomore. Went at state and then became a semi-finalist at Nationals.

Carlos (Student): So it just got really close to that national title. So that's kind of what pushed us both to join this program. And they joined alongside with me. , My teammate and we added another one on sophomore year. So that was a big introduction as well as my sophomore year I was in two career technical student associations.

Carlos (Student): I was in TSA and then I was also involved in Skills USA because at my home high school, they also offered the Intro to manufacturing program. 

Ryan Williams (Host): Yeah. 

Carlos (Student): And I was involved in that one, and the instructor there was very passionate about. Another Career technical organization called Skills, USA, , which is just what I'm in right now, and it's been life changing so far.

Carlos (Student): So that's what I'm officer in and I've been a part of that for almost about three years now. 

Ryan Williams (Host): Can you explain to any other high school students who may be listening what your participation in that CTSO looks like? What do you do? 

Carlos (Student): Yeah, so, um, every Career technical student organization, CTSO. Is based on a different sector.

Carlos (Student): So like I said, TSA is more engineering and technology based. Meanwhile, skills, USA, which is what I'm involved in right now on the student base hand, it's trades, and going into the workforce and being career ready for what job you're gonna do. A lot of our, um, h building classes or trades classes, they compete in Skills.

Carlos (Student): USA and now pre-engineering is involved in skills. USA. And I'm more involved in the leadership aspect of it. Where I encourage students to become better leaders in not just their classes, but outside of class and into the workforce or wherever they're gonna go into. And that's just my job. And I take a lot of passion and thrive for that.

Carlos (Student): Just being able to encourage others to grow alongside me. 

Ryan Williams (Host): That is awesome. Have you, , and I know you've discovered your passion for civil and architectural engineering. . Have you discovered any new strengths or interests besides that? 

Carlos (Student): Yeah, so of course I came in here and wanting to go into civil engineering and architecture, and as the path went along with different classes here at Tulsa Tech for engineering.

Carlos (Student): I discovered that I would probably want to go into mechanical engineering because I was more encouraged by Ms. Bonifiled's class, , by civil, the CIM class, and I want to pursue that in college this coming year once I graduate. 

Ryan Williams (Host): Very cool. What are some of the projects you've got to work on that got you so excited about that?

Carlos (Student): So definitely I'd say my favorite project was. In Mrs. Bonifield's class a previous year, it was a project where we had to work with a team to build a factory. And this is kind of the end project of the year where we kind of put all of our knowledge together from robotics to, , assisted vehicles and everything else such as that, and like all the mechanical aspects of it, and just put it all together into one working factory to.

Carlos (Student): I have a finished product and that, that was really a good experience for me and it was really fun to take a part of that. It was a couple week program that we did and that was what pushed me and my partners to want to pursue engineer. 

Ryan Williams (Host): Now was this, this is just my curiosity talking is , was the factory that you designed, were you doing all the blueprints for the building specs and everything, or were you mostly looking at what the outcomes.

Ryan Williams (Host): That are built inside the factory, if that makes any sense at all. 

Kim Bonifield: I think that's both. . I think they do both. Yeah. They have to plan it and then they have to implement it. 

Ryan Williams (Host): So there's um, what we're trying to, the outcome of that particular project is creating a building that makes things 

Kim Bonifield: Yeah. It's a product.

Kim Bonifield: Very cool. So it's manufacturing. So they will start with a product and then they have to develop the processes to develop that product. 

Ryan Williams (Host): Oh. And then get to the full building that makes that product. 

Kim Bonifield: Yeah. 

Ryan Williams (Host): Ah, that is so cool. 

Kim Bonifield: And they have to, to use all the pieces. 

Ryan Williams (Host): Nice. Very nice, 

Carlos (Student): very cool experience. 

Kim Bonifield: It is great.

Ryan Williams (Host): Can you think of a moment, , maybe it wasn't in Ms. Bonifield's class or whatever, but when something finally clicked and you felt confident in your skill? 

Carlos (Student): So I would say here, actually recently in my civil engineering architecture class that I came into it this year, I had already had previous, , experience with Revit, which I had been, , funded with Tulsa Tech.

Carlos (Student): To do my architecture competition, and I had already had experience and others in the classroom right now are just starting to learn it. So going into that, I'm kind of the help around the class because I have more knowledge on the processes and the little things, and I'm not perfect and I just have very beginner experience, but I have a little bit more than the others in the class right now.

Carlos (Student): So I'm trying to. I teach those skills, and that's kind of what encouraged me to want to become a leader too. I like teaching others what I know and how they can grow themselves and probably do it even better, and I'm fine with that. 

Ryan Williams (Host): Isn't that fun to kind of have that little bit of knowledge and then you can help others and engage them and help them grow as well?

Carlos (Student): Of course. It's, it's a pleasure. 

Ryan Williams (Host): Do you know yet what you plan to do after you complete the program? 

Carlos (Student): Of, so after the program, I plan to go into college. I am looking at OSU right now for the mechanical engineering, and I'm doing tours of their labs and I'm gonna go into OU Tour later this week and gonna find out if maybe that's a better option.

Carlos (Student): But right now I'm looking at OSU, mechanical engineering for that. 

Ryan Williams (Host): Very cool. What would you tell a prospective student that stopped by your classroom today? Cool. If they were interested in coming maybe to Tulsa Tech for pre-engineering, 

Carlos (Student): I would tell them that if they want to pursue or learn something different than they are in their home high school, it's a very good program to get into.

Carlos (Student): It's very technical. It's a process based program, so it's curriculum, so you go process by process day by day, and it's not as much, it doesn't feel like a class, but it feels more like a. Community of people that want to share that same passion with you and help you grow in your interests and kind of your passion.

Ryan Williams (Host): Well, thank you both so much, Ms. Bonfield and Carlos for joining us on today's podcast. 

Carlos (Student): Of course. It was a pleasure. 

Kim Bonifield: Thank you. 

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