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Science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) programs have grown in popularity over the past two decades. However, matching STEM pathways to the needs of local families and communities is becoming increasingly critical.
The story of Ben Nguyen—an advanced manufacturing and robotics teacher in Las Vegas’s Clark County School District—illustrates this reality. Now nine years into his career, he has gone from teaching high school physics to playing a pivotal role in aligning school, state, and local corporate resources to manufacturing technology programs that will allow students to move directly into lucrative careers with Nevada-based manufacturing giants like Tesla and Haas Automation.
“In STEM programs, I feel like we spend way too much money on potential and not enough on reality,” Nguyen remarks. “As a teacher, my creed is to make it real for students—the technology and the careers they can get into. When we do that, STEM becomes a powerful vector by which to accelerate their human potential.”
For Nguyen, this journey has required discovery and adaptation to best serve the specific needs of low-income students in his school.
Ben Nguyen is a 10th-year high school Career and Technical Education (CTE) teacher at Sunrise Mountain High School in Las Vegas, Nevada. In 2019, he received the 2019 Milken Educator Award, honoring his efforts in teaching, workforce development, and STEM programs for students across the State of Nevada. Ben works diligently to create pathways to career certification, gainful employment, and academic access for his students.
Nguyen started his career as an Advanced Placement physics teacher at Sunrise Mountain High School—a school of approximately 2,600 students in a low-income neighborhood in northeast Las Vegas. He also became the head coach of its after-school robotics club, which participated in basic competitions like VEX Robotics and FIRST® Robotics.
However, Nguyen also saw the potential for the high school to do more with robotics. “At the time, we didn’t have any robotics classes yet or any pathways in robotics really. So I thought, ‘Why not set up a robotics program, at least an Intro to Robotics class?’ I checked with the district and found that, sure enough, it had coding in its syllabus for a robotics class. That started our first formal robotics class at the high school.” He also expanded the after-school program to include CyberPatriot programming challenges, app challenges, and data science.
These efforts soon attracted the attention of individuals at the Nevada Department of Education who oversaw the state’s career and technical education efforts. This connection would drastically change the direction of Nguyen’s efforts and enable him to better serve his students.
In 2017, Tesla, a multinational automotive and clean energy company, built Gigafactory Nevada—one of the world’s largest factories for electric motors, energy storage, and vehicle powertrains and batteries—just outside of Reno. For a state historically limited to mining, gaming, and tourism, this development sparked an increased focus on the manufacturing sector and had education leaders buzzing about how to provide more manufacturing programs in high schools to feed this and other manufacturing operations.
As part of this push, Nguyen was invited to join an advisory committee for manufacturing with the Nevada Department of Education.
“I was identified alongside other people across the state to start an automation technology program that incorporated robotics, manufacturing, and engineering into the learning pathway,” says Nguyen. “These were advanced technologies that you might find in maybe a college setting and the manufacturing world. Now we had to figure out how to bring them into a three- to four-year high school program, where kids could get basic certifications to work in the industry right out of high school.”
This also required Nguyen to get certified to teach manufacturing and to proctor the certification exams his students would take.
During this time, he conducted deep research to shape his program so that it would align with the jobs into which his students would transition. “I was interfacing with companies on the advisory committee and getting their advice,” recalls Nguyen. “I would go spend a week at Tesla’s factories to see what their employees did and learn from their instructors. I would ask their human resources representatives, ‘What are you looking for in new candidates, especially if they’re coming right out of high school?’”
He continues, “Once I understood those expectations, the state gave me a lot of leeway in designing my curriculum to fit those expectations.”
The committee also created a suggested list of materials with the curriculum, including three-dimensional printers, computers, laptops, computer numerical control machines, and other machines. This investment equals upward of $400,000 per program. However, these machines were identical to the machines used on factory floors of the nearby Tesla and Lockheed Martin plants—a critical factor in preparing students fully for post-graduation placement. “As a teacher, that’s the type of STEM education support that makes the most sense,” says Nguyen. “But yes, it is very expensive. We get Perkins funding and Title I funding. And I collect fees and apply for grants—whatever it takes to make this program work.”
The fruits of Nguyen’s labors—and the contributions of so many organizations—should be compelling to all STEM advocates. Through his relationships with local manufacturing companies, he has been able to place dozens of graduating seniors who earned their certification through the advanced manufacturing pathway into manufacturing jobs that would have been unobtainable previously. To add to this success, twenty high schools in Nevada now offer similar programs.
Nguyen is especially proud of the possibilities this has opened for students who come from low-income families.
“For these kids, life has been hard, and it’s only going to get harder,” he says. “So I have to ask, ‘How can I equip them with the skills to be able to face the world with confidence and not shrink back to what is comfortable?’ We have to walk them through that path. It’s one thing to talk about being an astronaut or take a virtual tour of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, but it’s another thing to allow them to see themselves or someone like them in those positions. Then, they can go through these programs and do well, and that will lead them to the next step. That’s my role as a teacher.”
Mouser Electronics is an industry leader in supporting educational initiatives that inspire and engage students in STEM-related projects and initiatives. Through its unwavering support to education, particularly at the university and secondary levels, Mouser strives to motivate, inspire, and encourage new generations of engineers and scientists to lead us forward.
Mouser Electronics, founded in 1964, is a globally authorized distributor of semiconductors and electronic components for over 1,200 industry-leading manufacturer brands. This year marks the company's 60th anniversary. We specialize in the rapid introduction of the newest products and technologies targeting the design engineer and buyer communities. Mouser has 28 offices located around the globe. We conduct business in 23 different languages and 34 currencies. Our global distribution center is equipped with state-of-the-art wireless warehouse management systems that enable us to process orders 24/7, and deliver nearly perfect pick-and-ship operations.
