Investigating how things work drives Classical Christian Academy graduate

Josiah Coad has a passion for discovering what makes things tick.

“I’m very proud to have grown up as a Christian and to have gone to a Christian high school,” the Classical Christian Academy senior said. “I guess you could say that I just love trying to figure out God’s handiwork.”

That passion has led Coad in some interesting directions.

“One of the biggest things that shaped me early on was robotics,” he said. “I really loved learning how to build them and figuring out how to make them do things.”

Learning and building is a natural fascination for the son of an engineer father and teacher mother.

“My mom and dad both graduated from Texas A&M,” he said. “My dad had an engineering job in Germany for a long time, and when that ended he took a job in North Idaho. When my mom joined him here, she immediately fell in love with it. She told him that the family was moving to the Northwest – no question about it.”

At Classical Christian Academy, Coad continued to follow in family footsteps.

“My sister (Hannah) started student government here six years ago,” he explained. “At first, my mom was like ‘Oh, you’ll go into student government, too – just like your sister!’ That was the last thing I wanted to do.”

His reluctance relented – in part because he was curious about how student government worked. As a junior he was elected student body president.

“I realized at the end of the year just how overwhelming it all was,” he said. “When I was re-elected for my senior year, I decided I wanted to try to reform student government.”

As a junior, student government was primarily focused on planning and holding a number of events. As a senior, that focus seemed like a wasted opportunity.

“I wanted student government to focus on developing tools to grow leaders,” Coad said. “I spent the whole summer before my senior year reading books on leadership. I was fascinated by the concept of multiplying leadership – that if you grow followers, you add growth but if you grow leaders, you multiply growth.”

The events remained, but instead of focusing on the event, Coad organized them as a leadership exercise.

“I’m proud of what we accomplished this year and I hope that I’m leaving student government in better shape than when I found it,” he said. “That’s important to me.”

Coad said he’s ready to continue his journey in the family footsteps.

“I’m still waiting to hear back from one last school that I applied to – if I get accepted into Johns Hopkins, I’ll jump at the chance to go there,” he said. “But as it stands right now, I’m planning to study marine engineering at Texas A&M.”

With a twist.

“The campus for marine engineering is in Galveston,” he laughed. “But I’m still a little shaky on that as a major – I think I’ll really like it, but if that doesn’t work out I can easily change my major to computer engineering, and that’s at College Station.”