This is the final in a series of profiles on new, full-time instructors hired at Sunny Hills during or before the fall semester of the 2023-2024 school year.

One sports injury in high school ended up opening a career path for Martin Rodriguez, which eventually led him to his new position here as a teacher in the EPIC [Engineering Pathways to Innovations and Change] program.

It happened during Rodriguez’s sophomore year at Gahr High School in Cerritos.

A pitcher on his high school’s baseball team, Rodriguez said he injured his shoulder in his sophomore year while playing the sport. While pitching, the teacher said he felt a pain on his arm, and he instantly knew it was hurt. Although he continued to play for his remaining time in high school, he decided to stop playing baseball because his shoulder never fully healed.

That incident also led to his inability to participate in his typing class, Rodriguez said. So he ended up switching to another elective, Introduction to Architecture.

“At that time, I didn’t know what I was going to do in my life, so I think hurting my shoulder in baseball and being put into an architecture class led me into this career of becoming an architect and then becoming the EPIC teacher,” he said.

Throughout his remaining years at Gahr High School in Cerritos, Rodriguez said he continued to take additional architecture classes, eventually meeting someone who inspired him to pursue this subject as a major for college.

“In my junior year, I met a friend in high school whose dad was an architect,” the new teacher said. “Taking the [architecture] class and getting to know his dad both helped to push me into my career.”

At Sunny Hills, Rodriguez teaches three Regional Occupation Program [ROP] engineering courses and takes over as EPIC program coordinator – the third since ROP instructor Daniel Zanone left during the summer of 2021.

ENGINEERING HIS PATH POST-HIGH SCHOOL

After Rodriguez graduated from Gahr in 1991, he said he continued his education at the Southern California Institute of Architecture [SCI-ARC] in Los Angeles, where he received his bachelor’s degree in architecture in 2001.

After graduating from SCI-ARC, he has since worked for several firms over the last two decades, holding positions ranging from a project manager to a design lead. 

Most recently, he worked for his own practice called MRD Studio in Long Beach, which is an architecture and project management company, and before that, he worked for Beverly Hills-based Gruen Associates, which specializes in architecture and design.

Through such work experiences, Rodriguez said he has come to realize how architecture and engineering interact.

“Architecture is one of the many disciplines of engineering; it’s focused on design more than math,” he said. “Architecture is prominent in building or bridge design and construction, so anything that is constructed involves an architect with an engineer.”

Being able to efficiently manage his time during college also played a key role in his journey toward the fields of architecture and engineering.

“I learned that it’s very important to have time management skills because engineering is 100% deadlines,” Rodriguez said. “There’s deadlines for projects, there’s deadlines for cities and there’s deadlines for construction.

“Other than having math, science and engineering skills, I think time management skills are the most important trait.”

Rodriguez enrolled in the United States University, San Diego, teacher credential program’s master’s degree option and completed it in August of this year with a single subject emphasis on math.

Earning that degree allowed Rodriguez to be eligible to apply for teaching positions throughout California.

ENGINEERING HIS WAY TO THE ROP PROGRAM

Rodriguez looks to his experiences from his first job in education as a substitute teacher at Cerritos High School from 2015 to 2022 as a reason for how he ended up switching careers.

“I enjoyed being in the classroom so much,” he said. “When I became a substitute teacher, I knew that I wanted to eventually transition into becoming a full-time teacher.”

In July, Rodriguez learned of the school’s search for a new EPIC teacher through an online website that posts job openings for educators called edjoin.org. Because the position was offered through the North Orange County ROP, he had to go through its hiring process first before being assigned to work here.

Principal Craig Weinreich said Rodriguez will be a great addition to the staff because of his passion for engineering.

“I think he’s got a lot of enthusiasm and seems to have a great personality — one that’s going to mesh well with our kids,” Weinreich said. “I think his previous experience from [engineering] is going to be invaluable.”

Despite EPIC students having to adjust to a new teacher for each of the past two school years, the principal said he’s hopeful that the program will become more stable this school year with Rodriguez as the coordinator/instructor.

“We’re doing everything to support Mr. Rodriguez to make sure that his experience is good,” he said. “We haven’t heard too much so far, but it seems like things are going well with that and the transition has been good this year. 

“We’re doing everything in our power to try to maintain and keep that going, and we want to get it back to where it’s been in the past.”

In the two Introduction to Engineering Design, two Principles of Engineering and one Engineering Design and Development classes, Rodriguez said his goal is to guide more students toward this particular scientific field and help them pursue their passion.

“I want to lead students into career pathways,” he said. “For me, as an engineering teacher, my philosophy is to instill a working knowledge into the engineering field to hopefully assist students to get into an engineering career.”

Like Weinreich, Rodriguez also said he’s optimistic about bringing more stability to the EPIC program.

“Part of the reason for the turnover, I believe, is that those who taught the class previously did not have as much of an engineering or educational background as I have,” he said. “My passion is both engineering and education, so I think combining the two will help me turn this program into what it is truly meant to be.”

Junior Hannah Saab, a student in the third period Principles of Engineering class, said she looks forward to learning more practical skills in engineering from this instructor.

“With Mr. Rodriguez, I really like where the year is headed, so I’m hoping that he stays part of this program in the future,” Saab said. “Compared to the past teacher, he seems to have more experience in both engineering, as an architect and as a teacher which makes it fun to be in his class.”

MORE TO THIS LIFE THAN JUST ENGINEERING

So far, Rodriguez said he enjoys the campus environment and appreciates the positive experience with his peers.

“The staff here have been so welcoming, [even though] I’m not actually a Sunny Hills employee,” the ROP engineering teacher said. “Everybody here has really gone out of their way to make sure that I understand what’s going on at Sunny Hills.”

Rodriguez, who started playing baseball as a child in Little League, also coaches the sport at Long Beach Poly High School.

“Coaching and watching baseball is one of my biggest hobbies,” he said. “I have a 22-year-old son who plays college baseball and a 4-and-a-half-year-old son who plays tee-ball, and I love watching them play.”

Rodriguez is also the new adviser for the SkillsUSA club, a program centered on career and technical training for students.

“[Mr. Rodriquez] is very passionate, and I could tell that he’s very excited about SkillsUSA and just the overall engineering program,” said senior Shaharil Zaman, the human resources officer of SkillsUSA and a student in the fourth period Engineering Design and Development class. “He introduced the Capstone Project to us [in class], which I didn’t hear about until this year, and he’s trying to have us attend a weekend conference for SkillsUSA sometime this year.”

This endeavor consists of a year-long assignment in the instructor’s fourth period class that allows students to go through the entire engineering process to develop a prototype based on their project.

The class was divided into six teams, and each team presented different ideas for their Capstone Projects. The projects are meant to create a difference either locally or globally, with the invention the students are designing and then fabricating, Rodriguez said.

“I’ve always been into engineering, and I just thought this was a great project to not only help my college career, but also to just get me more involved in the program,” Zaman said.

The teacher said by the end of the year, Rodriguez hopes his students can apply what they learn in the classroom to the real world.

“Engineering is everywhere, and whether it’s medical or scientific or in the building industry, or anything else you can think of, an engineer did it,” he said. “It takes engineers to run the world.

“Students should understand that, and this is the best place to learn how to do that.”