CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va.

With his close-cropped sandy hair, slight build and dark conservative suit, Michael Penrod looked like an evangelist. His eyes blazed with intensity as he spoke to the crowd of more than 200 late last month. His voice rose and fell with cadences learned, he said, at his preacher father's knee.

But the young man wasn't an evangelist. He had just been named "Teacher of the Year" by SECME - the Science, Engineering, Communications, Mathematics Enrichment program, celebrating its twenty-first year of teacher training at a summer institute at the University of Virginia.

And the story Penrod was telling to a rapt audience of teachers, principals, administrators, and university and industry officials was the teacher's version of the conversion tale - a young man snatched from the brink of dropping out of school.

"And he came to my door, that young man who'd been in my dropout prevention class two years ago, and he smiled at me," Penrod said, as he wound toward the conclusion of his tale "'Hello, Mr. Penrod, I'm back,' he said. 'Are we going to build mousetrap cars this year?'

"And I said, 'Yes, we would.'

"'Will we do the egg drop this year - and bridge building and the lunar colony, too?' he asked.

"And I said, 'Yes, and yes, and no - we won't have time for the lunar colony this year.' But as he moved to his seat, I felt my heart lift with pride," Penrod said, his voice swelling and his arms rising as if to convey a blessing, "because that young man was not repeating my dropout prevention class. No, indeed. He was stepping," - and here he paused for dramatic effect - "into my honors physics class!"

At this, the teachers surged from their seats, exploding into applause and the trademark "SECME yell." While Penrod exhorted the students in the crowd to "reach for your star ... reach for your dreams," the crowd chanted "Yes! Yes! Yes!"

Hand-On Stuff

Indeed, mousetrap cars, rockets made from bottles, and platforms engineered to cushion the fall of an egg hardly seem to be the stuff of which religious experiences are made. But SECME's annual summer institute seems to have just that effect upon its participants.