Finally, the maker community is formed of many current engineers as well as future engineers. Nearly half of our adult participants either had been trained as engineers or are currently working in an engineering field. Some of the participants identified making as the hobby that allowed them to renew their love of engineering or inspired them to learn additional engineering skills outside of their original area of training. For example, after retiring from an electrical engineering career, Matt learned 3D design and prototyping to create a Rube Goldberg style amusement park for plastic frogs. Ray on the other hand was trained as a mechanical engineer, but learned about fluids, programming, and web interfaces to create a web-based watering system for his garden. Furthermore, this large percentage of adult engineers in the making
community provides a social mentorship network which young makers are able to tap. Fifty percent of young makers identified engineering or computer science specifically as their major of choice going forward into college. These pre-engineering makers will likely enter their programs with an expectation that project based learning will be part of their education.