Hiring good high-school engineering teachers is harder than ever these days, but David Mangus is an outlier.
After studying biology and engineering and unable to land a job in biology, he sold insurance for 11 years. But a 2002 neck injury prompted Mangus, 54, to fulfill a lifelong dream by gaining a teaching certificate. “I thought, I can sit at home with a sore neck or I can sit in classes,” he says.
Mangus在康涅狄格州哈特福德的工程和绿色技术学院教授。并运行其尼泊尔项目，使学生们设计和建造Himalayan村庄的混合动力和太阳能发电机。康涅狄格州慈善家旅行者Peter Werth在看到尼泊尔对电力的需求之后推出它，并支持康涅狄格州前工程计划和康涅狄格州商业和行业协会的支持。
The project is also supported by NAF, a national network of education, business, and community leaders working to prepare high school students from “high need communities” for college and beyond. United Technologies Corp. also serves as the school’s corporate sponsor.
David Mangus
Hartford, Conn.
ENR 5/22/17 p. 27
盛开的高中工程师鼓励风险学生为国外贫困社区设计和建立复杂的电力项目。新利18备用网址
Since 2013, Mangus’ students, many of whom have special education needs or are English-language learners, have shipped four constructed 1-kW hybrid power systems and one wind-only system to Nepal.
They plan to send another this spring and two more next year, including a 2kW system with underground conduits. Generators are prewired, packaged and shipped with assembly instructions in Nepalese. After transport through mountains via yak, systems heat classrooms, power laptops and refrigerate vaccines.
Mangus has inspired several students to pursue an engineering degree and a career in construction.
Danielle Ridley, a 16-year-old senior and Jamaican immigrant, wants to study electrical engineering, noting that Mangus gave him the confidence to excel in a recent internship at design firm BVH. “He never tells us the answer,” Ridley says. “He’s always like, ‘Go figure it out.’ ”
Maria Loitz, a firm principal and school board member, says Mangus, who volunteers his time despite having seven adopted children, inspires students to “experience something beyond what they ever thought they could do.”
教育者说：“你在你心中得到的是纯金。”
Benefactor Werth is impressed by the students’ “transformation” in the program and by the systems themselves, which are “still running, and running quite well,” he says.
In early meetings, he didn’t think students were focused enough. Now, he says, “I’m watching little miracles in Hartford.”
