Indiana Teacher of Year: Engineers need transferable skills
INDIANAPOLIS, Ind. (Inside INdiana Business) – Indiana’s 2019 Teacher of the Year says the key to teaching the next generation of engineers is taking an innovative approach to proactively teach skills that can be applied in a variety of jobs.
Tamara Markey, a Purdue University graduate and engineering teacher at the McKenzie Center for Innovation and Technology in Lawrence Township, received the state’s top teaching honor last year.
Following a career as an engineer with Amoco Oil and BP Pipelines, Markey says she decided to follow her passion and successfully applied to be a Woodrow Wilson teaching fellow. She began teaching in 2013.
In our Indiana’s Future-Ready Workforce series with Project Lead The Way on Inside INdiana Business with Gerry Dick, Markey talked about the need for community partnerships in education.
“Things are so rapidly changing because of technology, we find ourselves in a position where we are preparing students for careers that don’t even have names yet. So, what we focus on are transferable skills. 21st Century skills: collaboration, critical thinking, problem-solving, and it is critical to have community partners to help have a level of relevancy to what we are trying to teach and allowing experiential learning to take place in the classroom. It’s so powerful to have a community partner in the classroom to share what they are doing outside of the classroom and what kind of career opportunities are available to our students.”
You can watch the full interview with Markey by clicking here.