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New England, New York and New Jersey
Sept/Oct 2005
In an effort to transform lives and reach beyond my office walls, I set out from my comfortable corner in Eugene, OR to tour the East Coast and visit as many engineering outreach people and programs as possible. My journey was truly an eye-opening experience. The people I met were enthusiastic and the programs I saw were ambitious. It was extraordinary to be a part of it as I gave presentations at multiple conferences, colleges and Universities. The pre-engineering culture on the East Coast was progressive, intense and clustered.
My first stop was Manhattan College, a small Catholic college that serves as the lead partner for a new small theme based high school in NYC with the help of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (among others) called BETA (the Bronx Engineering and Technology Academy). The school of engineering supports and assists BETA to address the need for a more technologically literate citizenry, more engineers in our workforce, and a more diverse workforce.
This school year they have both freshmen and sophomores in the new school (as they work their way to all four high school classes in two more years). Each student that wants to go to BETA must apply and only 100 are accepted. Last year they had 1700 applicants!
Apparently, many BETA students were very excited about engineering and readily saw themselves as future engineers. Even though they had no air-conditioning, the mic gave off loud thunking sounds, and a bug was running around the presentation area, they were a lively and animated group. Before the presentation, many of these high school students approached me and introduced themselves. When speaking to the freshman class, they asked so many questions that the time ran over and we sadly had to cut them off. This school is meeting the needs of students because of the assistance of Manhattan College, an excited principal, and caring teachers. Many people are putting in the time and effort to make BETA a cutting edge high school and it shows in the attitudes and ambitions of the students.
And excited they should be….Manhattan College later informed me that any student that makes it through BETA gains automatic acceptance to Manhattan College! These students have cause to celebrate!
After a delicious dinner and coffee we were off to our next stop at Monmouth University in West Long Branch, New Jersey.
The department of Software Engineering at Monmouth University is geared toward students that want a degree in Software Engineering and Information Technology (IT). My first stop was to show the Middletown high school students how many different things you can do with an engineering career and in particular, a software engineering career. We talked about iPods, video games, PDAs, cell phones and Jurassic Park. We talked about choosing a school and finding a mentor. The students had the option to come or not and the ones that did were very attentive, serious and seemed to already have a good idea about what type of engineering they wanted to study. Monmouth University generously donated “Is There an Engineer Inside You?”, “The Fantastical Engineer” and the “Engineers Can Do Anything!” DVD to every student. We all had a great time talking about their future and I left feeling as though each of them took away something valuable.
Later that day, Monmouth hosted an event for their IT students. At Monmouth, every student is required to take an IT class to better prepare them for the working world. Apparently, it is working because according to the placement department, many Monmouth students get jobs faster and are better qualified for a larger variety of jobs because of the IT foundation. The students seemed genuinely interested in being well rounded and were very receptive to hearing about what engineers do.
It is believed that many of the students that are majoring in IT would make excellent software engineers but they just don’t know much about it. So, I talked to room of 150+ IT students about engineering and how closely it is related to software, the differences between software and computer engineering as well as the parallels between industrial engineering and information technology. After the presentation, many students came up to me and said they wished they had heard my talk much earlier and now wanted to explore an engineering career.
My next stop was Worcester, MA to give a keynote at the FIRST (For Inspiring and Recognizing Science and Technology) Southern New England Robotic conference. The conference was for new and veteran FRC teams and included workshops focused on team sustainability, important elements of the FIRST world, networking opportunities and how to get your team on its feet for the season. The FIRST people that mentor and work with students are truly amazing and worthy of a round of applause. Mentors make a huge time commitment and the students benefit tremendously from their efforts. In fact, many of the mentors said they became engineers because of the engineers that spent time helping them when they were contestants in FIRST. If you are trying to find a robotic competition to invest your energy, take a serious look at this one! Obviously, it’s working!
My next stop was SUNY, Canton (the State University of New York at Canton). To get the campus required a lengthy drive through upstate New York. Thankfully, it was a gorgeous day and the leaves were turning magnificent shades of bright yellow and orange. A special bonus for me was the opportunity to stop at Lake Placid, the home of the 1932 and 1980 winter Olympics. I watched freestyle ski jumpers train and toured the Olympic center. The feeling was so intense that I became very excited about the upcoming Olympics later next year.
SUNY Canton is an engineering technology school that is making the transition from a 2-year to a 4-year institution. They originally had 2-year programs in MET and CET but have recently added a 4-year Information Technology program. My tour of the school was fabulous because I am a person that loves looking at laboratories and the projects within. At Canton, in addition to the traditional labs such as materials, woodworking, milling and electronics, I saw an HVAC lab, an electrical house wiring lab, a snow mobile lab and a motorcycle repair lab. SUNY Canton is working hard to hold and keep students’ attention by offering programs and classes that capture a students’ interest.
While there, I talked to almost 200 junior high students about becoming an engineer and later they received a tour of the school. Canton is also interested in attracting more girls into their program. Most rural schools have a particularly difficult time attracting girls because unless the local industries are heavy into engineering, the parents won’t usually know about this fascinating career. For those girls that want to be engineers, the odds of getting a full-ride scholarship to a large college are very high.
 | After brainstorming ways to attract more girls into the school we set off to Portland, Maine to talk to the “orange team ” students at Brunswick junior high school. This presentation was sponsored by the Boston Society of Civil Engineers (BSCES). This junior high was special because they were being taught by an enthusiastic teacher that was actively grooming them to become engineers. 110 students were on the orange team that was receiving a new mission of making the best pumpkin chunker the following day. |
The BSCES, the national recipients of the ASCE Public Service Award and the ASCE Diversity Award, also sponsored a presentation that was held at Northeastern University later that day. The BSCES run three large-scale contests for students.
Through their 12th Annual Model Bridge Design Contest alone, which this year involves 23 different middle and high schools from across Massachusetts and Rhode Island, and as many as 200 students, over 50 volunteers have signed up to visit the schools regularly to prepare the students for the big competition on February 4th, 2006 at the Curry Student Center, Northeastern University. This year, students need to construct a bridge weighing less than one pound and spanning 30" out of clear presentation covers, fishing line and double-sided tape. See www.bsces.org
Simultaneously, they are running the New England Future City Competition, which involves approximately 30 schools 30 mentors, and hundreds of 7th and 8th grade students. This event will also be at Northeastern's Curry Center on January 21st.
In January 2006, they hold their 4th Annual Ralph Salvucci Online Bridge Design Contest, which is the computerized counterpart to their hands-on Model Bridge Contest, and a local contest within the national ASCE/West Point Online Bridge Design Contest. Last year, over 800 students from all corners of the Commonwealth competed, and this year they expect the contest will be even larger. They give out literally hundreds of prizes statewide, and the national grand prize is a $10,000 scholarship and a laptop computer. See www.engineers.org/onlinebridge.html
Northeastern is a large engineering school and a beautiful campus. Students from many high schools and Northeastern students attended the presentation in the Raytheon donated theater. The audience was lively and the BSCES kept it going by serving pizza and giving away DVDs, books, video games and music. Booths demonstrating engineering principles were constructed and engineers talked about their careers to wow the kids. The students in Boston that are taking advantage of the generosity of the BSCES are certainly on the fast track to becoming engineers!
After an excellent after-party at a Fenway Park sports bar (the Red Sox are my new favorite team), we were hard-pressed to get to Luzerne County Community College for my presentation the next day. This wouldn’t have been a big deal except for the large number of deer perusing the sides of the freeway. Praying that none of them would find anything desirable on the other side of the road, we drove without incident.
Luzerne was an interesting experience because they are an extremely proactive community college. They have established articulation programs with 3 different schools including Wilkes University. The advantage is that a student can attend Luzerne for 2 years and then step right into Wilkes University’s College of Engineering as a junior level student. This is wonderful because most community colleges don’t have such a seamless transfer process and it helps to keep the cost of college down. In addition, Luzerne has created a nanotechnology program where the students can spend 3 semesters studying at Luzerne and then take their last semester at Penn State in the microtechnology program to get real world experience working with industry. A 2 year student getting to work in a microtech lab is almost unheard of. Quite a bonus for Luzerne students.
 | From here we left for the New Jersey Science Teacher Association convention. New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT) sponsored me to provide a workshop about engineering careers. The turnout was small but I figure this was because Sally Ride was downstairs signing books! The line was so long that I didn’t get the chance to meet her but it was worth it because the teacher that attended my session were very interested in engineering education. |
The next day was packed with events sponsored by NJIT. We started by talking to students at Central High School. This classroom was much different from most because during passing period they played a Dragon BallZ music video to get the students focused and settled into their seats. Although this may sound like a chaotic classroom, the students quietly watched as they filed into the classroom and it even had my attention. The students are very fortunate to have an excellent teacher that is a computer science major. They are doing projects like modifying a car jack to go up and down with an electric screwdriver, building erector sets, and programming electrical and mechanical projects. However, in about the middle of the presentation, the students appeared bored and I thought they were lost in the wind. Then, NJIT stepped up and gave them all a copy of my book “Is There an Engineer Inside You?” and they suddenly became alive and alert, rapidly firing questions, and fully engaged. You’d think they just figured out what they wanted to do with the rest of their lives!
Next, we had lunch and set off to talk with many teachers, guidance counselors and parents about motivating girls to study engineering. The presentation was rounded-out by a fabulous panel of women engineering students that talked about their experiences and why they chose engineering. They handled questions from the audience about grades vs. desire and why the world needs engineers. It was enlightening and inspiring.
The reoccurring theme that stood out was that many teachers aren’t aware of engineering education resources that are available. They wanted competitions specifically for girls as well as resources to help them feel more comfortable teaching this unfamiliar subject. Girls were becoming turned off to engineering in middle school and they wanted to know what to do about it. NJIT has a very large and strong outreach program office so the teachers were in good hands.
Now I had a few days to rest and relax! My original R&R intention was to rent a bicycle and ride around Martha’s Vineyard but the weather was against me. It became cold and rainy on my first day off. L So I settled for touring and shopping all over Cape Cod, Newport and Providence! Then, it was back to work for my last presentation.
This stage of my trip landed me at Bristol Community College in Fall River, MA. The day began in an auditorium full of high schools students that were attentive and seemed genuinely interested in engineering until the very end when I asked if there were any questions. The room was silent until my host yelled that students with good questions would win prizes which included copies of my book, t-shirts, and video games. The room suddenly became alive with really great questions. After 15 minutes of fielding questions, even after all the prizes were gone, the time was up and we had to cut them off. Everyone seemed to leave happy.
Later that afternoon, Bristol hosted another event for teachers and guidance counselors about overcoming math barriers and getting women into engineering. It was a small but fiercely interested group. We talked about everything from animals, to food to sports. We talked about math as one tool in the box and certainly not the only tool of value. We talked about their classrooms and their situations. They all left with new ideas for approaching the subject and reaching more kids.
Now it was time to go home. I was happy as I rode to the airport. Happy about all the friends and contacts I made. Happy about the job I had done and happy that I had the best career in the world. My engineering degree has taken me places I never expected along with meeting people and making friends that have transformed my life for the better. My work is a reflection of my values and my belief that engineering school prepares you to be whatever you want to be.
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aid your quest for engineering school information. I am
the author of two books and several booklets on engineering
careers. I am also the editor of the Pre-Engineering Times
and give workshops and presentations on engineering careers.
