My name is Audrey Stahrr and I am a Freshman Civil Engineering student at Wayne State University. I am writing to you as a Community Outreach Coordinator on behalf of the Society of Women Engineers at Wayne State. We are organizing an event on Saturday, February 25, 2017 for high school students so that they may learn more about the many different fields in the engineering discipline.

 

February 25th falls on the last weekend of Engineer's week as well as most public school's Mid-Winter break, and so we saw it as the perfect opportunity to invite high school students to attend an event at Wayne State University to teach them about engineering and what engineers do in the workforce.

 

The event will be held from 8:00am until 3:30pm at the Student Center of Wayne State University. The event is free of charge to all students interested in attending, with breakfast and lunch included. In order to pique student interest in the field and teach them about engineering, we will be holding various activities that the students can participate in throughout the day. The students will be divided into groups and led by an College of Engineering student mentor. There will be six activities that the students will participate in, each activity focusing on a different aspect of engineering. The fields that will be addressed include Biomedical Engineering, Electrical and Computer Engineering, Chemical Engineering, Civil Engineering, Industrial Engineering and Mechanical Engineering. Each activity will not only be engaging but educational as well. Students will learn about the different components of the activity and how it relates to the field of engineering.

 

For example, in relation to Electrical and Computer Engineering, the students have participated in making their own burglar alarms and have learned about the different electrical components. Civil engineering has previously created gumdrop bridges to provide a physical example of the strengths of various shapes. Biomedical engineering has shown the students how much force they may be able to exert on a sensor and how a computer programming can display the results. At the end of the day, the students will attend a student panel in order to ask college students any additional questions about engineering, college life, and other topics of discussion.

 

In addition, before the activities, the students will be addressed by a keynote speaker from academia/workforce who will explain to the students the professional life an engineer may lead. Through the keynote speaker, the students will learn of what the future may hold if they should enter the field of engineering as well as learn what needs to be accomplished should they decide to pursue this career.

 

An example agenda of the day's events may be seen below:

 

Time	Activity
8:00a - 8:30a	Registration/Breakfast
8:30a - 8:45a	Introduction
8:45a - 9:15a	Keynote Speaker
9:15a - 10:00a	Civil & Environmental Engineering
10:05a - 10:50a	Chemical Engineering
10:55a - 11:40a	Mechanical Engineering
11:45a - 12:30p	Lunch
12:30p - 1:15p	Biomedical Engineering
1:20p - 2:05p	Electrical and Computer Engineering
2:10p - 2:55p	Industrial Engineering
3:00p - 3:30p	Student Panel/Closing

Thank you,
Audrey Stahrr