Rachel Torres, M.Ed.

Rachel Torres entered construction education from an unusual direction: she spent her first five years as a field engineer at Kiewit Infrastructure on highway and heavy-civil projects across the Mountain West. That field experience gave her something most construction educators lack — direct exposure to the measurement problems that apprentices and journeymen face on real job sites. When a worker calculates the wrong number of cubic yards for a subgrade excavation, or misreads a plan scale, the error shows up as wasted material and rework costs. Rachel saw those errors happen, and she spent the second half of her career teaching people not to make them.

She holds a Master of Education (M.Ed.) with a focus on technical and vocational curriculum design, earned while teaching at a regional construction trades program. She also holds NCCER Master Trainer certification (MT #MT-2018-4492), issued by the National Center for Construction Education and Research. NCCER Master Trainer status requires demonstrated instructional competency and curriculum development skills aligned with national construction craft standards — the highest instructor-level credential NCCER offers.

At CalcSummit, Rachel writes every calculator in the Conversion silo and all educational overlay content across the site: glossary definitions, how-to guides, unit conversion tools, and construction math references. Her approach to each conversion calculator starts with the NCCER core curriculum measurement standards, verifies the formula against NIST Handbook 44 unit definitions, and then applies plain-language explanation written to a Grade 9–11 reading level. Every glossary term she writes must satisfy two tests: accurate per the applicable standard, and understandable by a first-year apprentice.

Rachel developed the "Construction Math Made Simple" course now used by ACTE (Association for Career and Technical Education) member programs across 12 states. She has contributed two bylined articles to ACTE Techniques magazine on applied construction measurement instruction and curriculum alignment. She also contributed to the NCCER Core Curriculum materials as a subject-matter reviewer for the measurement and materials estimation chapters.

Her OSHA 30-Hour general industry card and field engineering background ensure that CalcSummit's educational content bridges the gap between classroom theory and site-level practice — a gap she has seen cost contractors real money throughout her 14-year career.