On Tuesday, a number of Lawrence County eighth grade students will be in Columbus to show what they know about engineering, one of the hottest career fields in the United States.

Fortunately for the county, the schools are part of Project Lead the Way, a nonprofit educational organization that was started in 1997.

It developed what is called the STEM curricula or science, technology, engineering and math for students from kindergartners to high school seniors.

The whole point of Project Lead the Way is to make students able to compete in the sciences globally.

This upcoming competition will feature students from Chesapeake and Ironton Middle schools who will enter the Team Engineering Design Challenge. That is a statewide competition where the winners will go on to compete on the national level.

Their coordinator is Matt Monteville, who for the past days has been putting the students through their paces because when they get to Columbus they will have no idea what they will be required to engineer.

Besides honing their design skills, making them work in this spontaneous way teaches the students how to work as a team, sharing ideas and the workload.

That’s why not only do we wish the students to become winners, we also know the experience will give them the skill sets to be successes once they are out of school.