As I wrap up my first month as the new TOpS 2015 grant director, I am excited to be aboard and working with the Northeast Indiana Foundation and Community Partnerships Inc. There are so many people and organizations that have contributed good work on behalf of this grant already, and each element of TOpS is well on its way to producing beneficial results for northeast Indiana.

One of the elements we are hard at work advancing is the K-12 education piece, which includes the startup of at least six STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) New Tech high schools in our region. In support of northeast Indiana's work, I recently joined Mark Becker, Kirk Kemmish and 12 education professionals on a trip to tour two New Tech high schools in Texas to learn best practices and investigate what characteristics make up a successful STEM New Tech school.

I am not an education professional, nor have I worked long with the TOpS 2015 grant, so I looked at the schools with fresh perspective. I arrived in Texas with a number of questions. For example, would there be any marked differences between the project-based learning (PBL) model of a New Tech high school and that of the traditional high school? Are students still receiving a broad-spectrum foundation in primary education basics, such as English and history, when there is such a strong focus on math and science?

I questioned whether students, in what seemed to be a demanding program, had the time to engage in extracurricular activities. Finally, I wondered whether students' test results would be different from those at the traditional high school. Ultimately, as someone who experienced the fad of "new math" in the 1960s, I wondered if the New Tech model really worked.

I am pleased to report that the New Tech programs we toured in Texas provided evidence and examples in support of a program and curriculum that is succeeding. The PBL model engages the students in a broad range of disciplines within each course, rather than the traditional "silo" learning approach. The projects, which teachers construct in collaboration with each other, are designed to require the students to have mastery of course work across a spectrum of the basic curriculum, apply that course work to problem-solving and reach conclusions, all while working in groups.

This develops teamwork skills that many will be required to utilize in work situations, especially those who go into STEM fields. These students also appeared inquisitive and alert in each of the classes we visited, and, more than I would have guessed, they took to working in groups well. A good number of the students were still engaged in extracurricular activities, albeit with a very responsible attitude about getting their course work done above all.

The students we met appeared confident and articulate in public speaking. As someone whose public speaking in high school was confined to one speech class, I was surprised by how many of the students seemed comfortable presenting. I was not surprised that the student panels presenting to us consisted of talented speakers because I assumed they had self-selected or were selected according to their abilities. But when we were invited to talk with any of the students in regular classes, or when we dropped in on a class holding its own student presentations, those students were equally confident and articulate.

To produce such articulate and confident students is an accomplishment in its own right, but in the end, what about the academic results? The testing from these two STEM New Tech high schools does show incremental improvement. For example, in one Dallas suburb high school we visited, the overall district result in reading/English language arts shows sophomores with a 93 percent pass rate, while the New Tech High in that district has results of 99 percent.

In other subject areas, the overall district pass rates versus those for the New Tech high school were: math 76 percent versus 86 percent; social studies 93 percent versus 97 percent; and science 73 percent versus 76 percent, respectively. Differentials were the same for the second school.

At the end of this trip I came away a believer. I am excited to be a part of exploring this new educational model on behalf of the northeast Indiana region and in support of the school districts that are planning and implementing their own project-based learning programs. With the completion of the TOpS 2015 program and many other regional efforts, northeast Indiana will have one of the largest concentrations of New Tech high schools in the country.

We are encouraged by the potential effect these programs will have on our future work force and the region's ability to supply highly qualified workers to existing and new businesses. Stay tuned for more progress as we work to produce and build upon the information we found in Texas to create more success stories for our region's students.

LEONARD HELFRICH is director of the Talent Opportunity Success (TOpS) 2015 inititative that is funded through a $20-million Lilly Endowment grant.