CIMdata PLM Industry Summary Online Archive
16 September 2008
Company News
PTC® Global Education Program Sponsors U.S. Department of Energy “Real World Design Challenge”
PTC® announced that it will provide Pro/ENGINEER® and Windchill® software solutions to create the technology foundation for the U.S. Department of Energy “Real World Design Challenge” (RWDC). The Real World Design Challenge aligns secondary education with 21st Century workforce needs, and strengthens professional development for teachers by providing training and support from mentors in National Laboratories, the Federal Aviation Administration, industry, and higher education, to improve science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) skills. Through its Global Education Program, PTC will donate licenses of Pro/ENGINEER and Windchill to all participating schools. Pro/ENGINEER is PTC’s integrated parametric MCAD/CAM/CAE software that companies use to develop detailed, intuitive and realistic digital product models and related deliverables. Windchill allows organizations to manage product content and business processes throughout the entire product lifecycle.
The RWDC is being launched as an annual event that will provide high school students the opportunity to work on real world engineering challenges in a team environment. Each year student teams from participating states will be given the opportunity to design a solution to resolve a challenge that confronts one of our nation’s leading industries. The first stage of the challenge will consist of state level “Governor’s Design Challenge” competitions. Winning teams from the state competitions will be invited to compete in a National Challenge in Washington, D.C. hosted by the Department of Energy.
The PTC Global Education program provides software, curriculum and tutorials to nearly five million students, twenty-three thousand teachers, and twelve thousand schools in twenty-eight countries around the globe. Through this program, PTC will provide free licenses of Pro/ENGINEER Schools Edition design software, project based curriculum and tutorials to RWDC participating schools upon completion of teacher training. Students will take advantage of Pro/ENGINEER’s design capabilities to develop their solutions to the challenge. Additionally, PTC is offering free licenses of its collaboration solution, Windchill, hosted on Hewlett Packard servers located at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory, to be used by RWDC teams to improve collaboration among team members and with industry mentors. Windchill offers tools for storing, managing and sharing 3D design and project data. Working within Windchill’s virtual workspace, teams of student designers – situated anywhere in the world – can access up-to-the minute data pertaining to their project. Windchill will be used by the mentors to collaborate with and support the work of the teachers and students and will be used by the school teams to manage their Challenge solutions.
“We are pleased to include PTC as a founding sponsor of the Real World Design Challenge,” said Bill Valdez, Director of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Workforce Development for Teachers and Students. “The Real World Design Challenge is a prime example of how the government, private industry, and our educational system can work together to keep our workforce the best in the world.”
“PTC is proud to be the design and collaboration technology sponsor for the Real World Design Challenge,” said Dr. Ralph Coppola, director, worldwide education, PTC. “This donation underscores PTC’s longstanding commitment to advancing Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics education initiatives through its support of programs like the RWDC and the FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) Robotics Competition.”
For more information please visit: http://www.ptc.com/company/community/doe.
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