AMAZING EDUCATORS

BUILDING BRIDGES TO NEW EXPERIENCES

By: Elizabeth Kalmus ’04

Jeffrey Niemiec never considered a career in education. With a mechanical engineering background, he spent six years at an engineering firm in Pennsylvania. But one day, fate stepped in. In addition to engineering, Niemiec was coaching speech and debate on the east coast. La Salle heard about his qualifications and offered him the position of the head coach of their speech and debate team. In 2017, he accepted and moved to California. In the past few years, Niemiec has led the team as they have competed nationally, and won many prestigious awards.

When COVID hit, Niemiec wasn’t quite sure how the season would unfold. However, after a few weeks of tournament cancelations, the program moved online. Niemiec says, “The online competitions actually opened up new possibilities. The team used to attend roughly 28 competitions in person, but because the competitions went virtual, the team was able to compete in over 40 competitions in 2020 and 2021. They were also able to compete virtually at Yale and Princeton, among others.”

The speech and debate team is doing better than ever - qualifying two different teams to the Tournament of Champions (ToC) in Silver Public Forum Debate. They received their most-ever qualifiers in speech to the Tournament of Champions with five members earning a spot. Additionally, the team secured one of the four total spots for the East LA District of Nationals in Public Forum Debate. Seven members of the team qualified in speech to the National Individual Event Tournament of Champions (NIETOC). One of the freshman team members qualified - something nearly unheard of as a freshman. The team also had a senior reach the distinction of “Academic All-American” this year, an honor less than two percent of speech and debaters qualify for. The team has a goal to qualify for three of the four major Nationals each year and just recently achieved that goal for the fourth consecutive year. winning awards. “Learning how to effectively wield your voice is the most important skill a person can have,” says Niemiec. “Regardless of what profession a person has, they need to communicate with someone else. And utilizing your voice is one way to make a positive tangible impact on this world.”

Although the role of speech and debate head coach can be time consuming, it hasn’t stopped Niemiec from wanting to contribute even more to La Salle’s state-ofthe-art curriculum offerings. The opening of La Salle’s STEAM Lab in 2018 gave Niemiec an idea. “I wanted to help bring engineering courses to La Salle’s course catalog. But not just engineering courses the way they’re traditionally taught to high school students. Real courses, where we could talk about the real-life situations the students would encounter with a career in engineering.”

Niemiec felt his experience as a mechanical engineer would benefit La Salle’s students. “I wanted students to have the opportunity to learn about engineering and what they’d need to know beyond high school and college. To develop courses where they would learn and train on programs and software they historically couldn’t get until in the field.”

La Salle recognized the importance of such an exceptional offering and hired Niemiec full-time in 2018 to begin developing courses under an engineering platform, starting with a course called Introduction to Architecture and Engineering.

Niemiec has continued developing the engineering program and more courses are now offered, giving La Salle’s students access to an elite engineering curriculum. New this year, Niemiec helped develop a course involving the AutoCAD software program, the leading engineering designer platform used globally. The Technical Drafting in AutoCAD class is a groundbreaking course and one of the first to be offered

at the high school level. “When you leave college with an engineering degree, every engineering firm knows they will need to teach you how to use AutoCAD. It is not really taught in college courses. With this course at

La Salle, students get first-hand training in the leading software program in the engineering world. That skill alone makes them ahead of the curve when starting a career as an engineer or architect.”

COVID-19 hasn’t stopped Niemiec from getting students involved in engineering. “It’s a hands-on course, but we made it work.” He dedicated himself to ensuring his students didn’t lose focus on their projects while home-schooling during the pandemic. Niemiec created care packages for all of his students at the beginning of the school year, based on what supplies they needed to create their ideas. “Whether they told me they needed wood or glue, or if they needed help figuring out how to submit a video of their project, I would collect all the materials requested and create packages for each of them, leaving them outside where the students could come and pick them up. We have continued using this system for everything, including picking up materials and submitting and dropping off projects.”

Despite having to conduct traditionally hands-on courses online, Niemiec says the projects were just as impressive and engaging. A student recently submitted a bridge he built with 100 popsicle sticks and hot glue. The class watched, as he placed 475 pounds on his bridge, resulting in the highest weight load that Niemiec has seen in any of his courses to date. “It provides them with a place to create and construct with their peers and to offer and receive encouragement. So even though we didn’t have access to the STEAM lab, the students were still able to create engineering marvels. It is just all the more exciting to see what the students will create now that we’re back in the classrooms.”

//THINK FAST JEFFREY NIEMIEC

Movie: Drop Dead Gorgeous

Food: Pizza, Fettuccine Alfredo, or anything vegetarian

Band: Reel Big Fish

Favorite Way to Relax: Attend theme parks as I am the President of the “American Coaster Enthusiasts.”

If You Could Go Anywhere in the World, where would you go? During COVID-19 - New Zealand because of the travel deal! Outside of COVID-19 - Poland to study my family history.

Favorite Place on Campus as a Teacher? My classroom, Room 303. Also, the lower parking lot, as it holds so many memories of starting great trips with the Speech and Debate team.